NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — The city's public advocate and correction commissioner met Thursday to discuss ways to address the crisis conditions on Rikers Island amid growing calls for reforms at the troubled jail complex, which has faced severe staffing shortages and inmate deaths happening at shocking rates.
According to Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, Rikers Island isn't safe on either side of the bars.
"Up until this point there has been mismanagement, misplaced priorities, missing resources. And it's creating an environment that harms both correction staff and and incarcerated individuals," Williams said.
Nine people held at Rikers have died this year. Three in just the last month.
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"There is a state of emergency on Rikers Island," Williams said.
City Department of Correction Commissioner Vincent Schiraldi admits there are systemic problems at Rikers.
"It's not five minutes of neglect. It is decades of neglect that have gotten us here," he said. "There is a desperate sense of urgency that we face right now in trying to dig ourselves out of where we are."
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Schiraldi is promising to increase staffing rates, which have gotten dangerously low, and to put an end to the 24-hour shifts some have had to work.
"All day long there will be programs available to people and they will be encouraged to participate in them. When that happens violence goes down and when that happens more people come to work," he said. "It's a complicated set of levers that need to be pulled, we are trying to pull many of them at the same time."
Williams wants people to be released from Rikers whenever possible.
"There are folks that don't necessarily need to be on the Island who can be released with supervised release right now," Williams said.
Both Williams and Schiraldi said courts need to move faster, with most of the Rikers population being held pretrial.