Rikers An Oral History

A shocking, groundbreaking oral history of Rikers Island; a brutal portrait of violence, despair, and injustice told by the detainees and officers whose lives have been forever altered.

What happens when you jam almost a dozen jails, bulging at the seams with society's cast-offs, onto a spit of landfill, purposefully hidden from public view and named after the family of a judge who sent escaped slaves and free Black men to plantations in the South? Prize-winning journalists Graham Rayman and Reuven Blau have spent two years interviewing more than 130 people comprising a broad cross-section of lives Rikers has touched—from detainees and their relatives to officers, lawyers, and commissioners, with stories spanning from the 1970s to the present day. 
 
The deeply personal accounts that emerge call into question the very nature of justice in America.
 
Offering a 360-degree view inside the country's largest detention complex for the first time, their voices take readers on a harrowing journey into every corner of Rikers—a failed society unto itself that reflects society’s failings as a whole.

Grace Price, on her way to jail in 2011, recalls the moment she found "a little crack head lady" asleep on her shoulder as they were crossing the Rikers Island Bridge: "She was nasty but I just let her sleep there, because it somehow made me feel like I was actually in control of my situation." Dr. Homer Venters was shocked by the screams on his first day working there: "They're in solitary, just yelling... the yelling literally never stops." After a few months though, your ears adjust to the sounds of Rikers.
 
Nestor Eversley recalls how detainees made weapons from bones. Ronald Tackmann details his ingenious escapes. Retired officer Tami Lee recounts how all the inmates wanted the late, great Tupac Shakur to listen to their raps. Sandy Sutton describes her revulsion at a lunch of pig tails and beans.

These are visceral stories of despair, brutality, resilience, humor and hope, told by the people who were marooned on the island over the course of decades. As calls to close jails and reduce the number of incarcerated people grow louder across the country, with the movement to close the island complex itself at the forefront, Rikers is a resounding lesson about the human consequences of the incarceration industry.

Graham Rayman covers criminal justice and policing for the New York Daily News. He has won multiple journalism prizes over his thirty-year career. He has previously worked at New York Newsday, Newsday, and the Village Voice. He is also the author of The NYPD Tapes.

Reuven Blau is a senior reporter at The City. He has previously worked at the New York Daily News, the New York Post, and the Chief-Leader. He is known as the dean of Rikers reporters.