Stabbings and slashings surge on Rikers Island

Consultants say the gory onslaught is the results of violent felons making up the majority of inmates at Rikers nowadays.
J.C. Rice

It’s a massacre on Rikers Island. 

In 2021, the complicated noticed 419 whole slashings and stabbings of inmates and corrections officers — a 1,097 p.c enhance from 2011 — based on figures shared throughout a public Division of Corrections assembly earlier this week. In that very same time, the inmate inhabitants dropped by greater than half, from 12,419 to five,563. 

This yr is on track to be even bloodier, information present.

By the top of April, 191 stabbings have been recorded, based on Board of Corrections member Julio Medina. That’s on tempo for 575 for the yr, a 37 p.c enhance from 2021.

A few of these vicious assaults embrace a Bloods gang member who was slashed within the face with a big kitchen knife at first of April, and a corrections officer who almost misplaced his eye and ended up with eight stitches whereas breaking apart a struggle in March.

Consultants say the gory onslaught is the results of violent felons making up the majority of inmates at Rikers nowadays, as bail reform has saved low-level criminals out. 

A corrections officer is seen after being slashed within the face at Rikers.

“There isn't any doubt that the individuals now detained are, proportionally, a extra concentrated group of significant and harmful offenders,” former DOC Commissioner Martin Horn instructed The Submit. “The much less critical offenders are at present extra possible to not be jailed.”

Corrections Officers’ Benevolent Affiliation President Benny Boscio Jr. attributed the alarming rise in stabbings and slashings to the jail’s lengthy operating staffing disaster.

“We did the numbers from January to April, and we’ve already misplaced 400 officers as a consequence of resignations and retirements. In the identical interval, solely 75 recruits graduated from the academy,” he mentioned. “We want our bodies to have the ability to make everybody protected in our jails.”

One inmate long-established a knife out of plexiglass, with handles made out of ripped material.

Rikers has gained notoriety lately for crammed cells, absentee officers and deteriorating infrastructure, together with damaged plexiglass, metallic mattress frames and heating coils.

Pictures supplied by a corrections supply present chunks of plexiglass an inmate had chiseled right into a boring however lethal knife, with handles long-established from ripped material and pages of a newspaper. One other picture reveals an officer with a blade jutting out of her hand after intervening in a gang struggle.

Boscio blamed the de Blasio administration and his DOC commissioners for mishandling Rikers and chopping again on weapon searches. 

Corrections Officers’ Benevolent Affiliation President Benny Boscio Jr. attributed the alarming rise in stabbings and slashings to the jail’s lengthy operating staffing disaster.

“It was eight years of neglect,” he mentioned. “The prior administration was so involved about use of power that they thought placing all the identical gang members in the identical housing areas would cease inmate-on-inmate violence, but it surely didn’t. Now they have been simply struggling for energy. It created armies.”

Present DOC Commissioner Louis Molina shared the identical sentiment.

“The ineffective selections of prior leaders of this metropolis and this company have crippled the Division’s means to successfully function and it has resulted in tragedies for officers and other people in custody alike,” he mentioned.

Manhattan federal prosecutors lately threatened to hunt federal monitoring for Rikers Island if the DOC doesn’t curb violence, appropriate staffing points and repair residing circumstances.