This month, New York City is full of events celebrating Black history. And there is much to celebrate, both in terms of the achievements of Black Americans and the progress that has been made, through our organizing, to combat oppression and build opportunity for Black people, and in many ways, all marginalized people.
At the same time, we continue to live with the reality of stark racial disparities in our city, despite our reputation for progressivism. Rikers Island stands as a glaring example. Public data shows that Black people make up just about 20% of New York City residents, but nearly 60% of individuals incarcerated at Rikers. To put it another way, if Black people were incarcerated in New York City at the same rate as white people, there would be about 3,600 fewer people in jail. It’s worth noting that these disparities increased over the last four years, as former Mayor Eric Adams cut prevention-focused programs and took a more aggressive approach to policing.
Considering the clear inequities these data points demonstrate, the next question for all of us should be why, and then, what will we do to change it?
First, a bit of history. Rikers Island got its name from the Riker (originally Rycken) family, whose members included Judge Richard Riker. Riker, along with a group of his fellow judges, used their positions to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law so zealously that abolitionist David Ruggles nicknamed them “The Kidnapping Club.” New York City bought the island from the Rikers in 1884 and started converting it to a penal colony. In this process, they relied on the labor of people who were incarcerated at Blackwell’s Island at the time.
In the years since, New York City has gone through many changes, some specific to our city, and others shaped by national events. The civil rights gains of the 1960s had an important impact even here, in a northern city that is not often recognized. For example, the Fair Housing Act outlawed practices like redlining that were rampant here. But these gains were followed by decades of disinvestment that devastated Black communities, pulling back on government support just when our people were gaining greater access to it. This shrinking of social services, combined with an expansion of policing and criminal penalties, fueled mass incarceration. Incarceration is not only the result of systemic inequities — including wealth and employment gaps, and uneven access to housing, healthcare, and education — but also continues to generate more inequity, as people returning home continue to face barriers and discrimination far beyond their “time served.”
In 1991, at the height of mass incarceration in New York City, Rikers Island and other city jails held more than 21,000 people. Since then, we’ve had wins toward dismantling this system. The number of people jailed on an average day has fallen to less than 7,000, and we have a law in place that requires Rikers Island to close. But Black communities, and oppressed people all over our city, have still not received the mass investments needed to undo the harms of austerity paired with hyper-criminalization.
Closing Rikers Island presents an opportunity to right these historical wrongs and invest in a City where Black New Yorkers, and everyone, can thrive. Shrinking the city’s jail footprint and moving off Rikers is estimated to save $1.2 billion annually — money that must be reinvested in addressing the root causes of the public health and safety needs of Black and Brown communities all across the City of New York.
We have a new mayor in place who has stated his commitment to closing Rikers, and has already taken steps toward that, including appointing leaders of the Department of Correction and Department of Probation, Stanley Richards and Sharun Goodwin, who spent their careers investing in the potential of people society seems to have discarded. As we move into the city budget cycle, the next step will be for Mayor Mamdani to take bold and necessary action to reallocate resources from the Department of Correction to the evidence-based programs and interventions that our communities have always deserved.
Rikers Island, in both its past and its present, is an indication of the ways that true justice continues to evade Black people and communities across our city, and a reminder of the work that remains ahead.
Dr. Divine Pryor is the Chair of the Criminal Justice Committee for the NAACP New York State Conference, and a member of the Commission on Community Reinvestment and the Closure of Rikers.