🚨 The Gutter Report: Rikers Island Crisis
Why the island needs to be shut down — and my time inside proves it
Rikers Island ain’t a jail — it’s a graveyard with gates. Year after year, bodies pile up inside those walls, and the city calls it “corrections.” Families call it murder.
So far in 2025, at least 8 people have died in custody, many under suspicious circumstances — overdoses, medical neglect, violent assaults. The federal monitor says the Department of Correction is in “total collapse.” Guards are skipping shifts, inmates are locked in filthy cells for days, and medical emergencies get brushed off like noise.
🛫 A city of cages floating in New York waters.
The truth is simple: this island is unfixable. You don’t reform a cemetery, you close it. Endless violence, broken medical care, and a culture of neglect make survival the only focus inside. Politicians talk about shutting Rikers by 2027, but every day until then is another roll of the dice on who makes it out alive.
🚪 Correction officers stood guard, but gangs ran the island.
This ain’t theory for me. I lived it. In October 2014, I was sent to OBCC (Otis Bantum Correctional Center) and stayed until July 2015. Rikers was extremely violent. Fights broke out daily, and CO’s had no control. Inmates disrespected officers openly. Gangs really ran the blocks.
🔑 Keys never brought order — only more locked doors.
After Rikers, I went to Downstate, then did the bulk of my bid at Franklin Correctional Facility, finished with a 90-day stretch at Queensboro, and came home on October 17, 2017. Rikers was the scariest part of it all. It hardened me, but I wouldn’t wish that place on anybody.
🛏️ Cardboard for mattresses, men stacked like trash.
New York calls Rikers a “correctional facility,” but nothing about it corrects. It destroys mental health, breaks families, and sends men back to the streets worse than when they went in.
🏚️ OBCC, where I spent 8 months — a place that broke spirits instead of building them.
I can say it firsthand: Rikers didn’t just cage me — it showed me what happens when a city turns its back on its own. That’s why I report from the gutter today. That’s why I tell these stories. The island must be shut down. Not in 2027. Not after another dozen lives are lost. Now.
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Good morning and Godspeed.
— Elliott Carterr
