#rememberingrikers

NYC’s notorious Rikers Island: “I hated the place.”

On October 17, 2019, the New York City Council voted to shut down Rikers Island by 2026, after years of protest and outrage over the jail’s deplorable conditions and a history of violence against and by inmates.

Rikers Island.

I had visited Damon, the youngest of my four children, at the 413-acre jail complex many times after he began getting into serious trouble with the law at age 20.

I hated…