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New York City Mayor Eric Adams was baptized at notorious Rikers Island jail on Good Friday. Adams was baptized by civil rights campaigner Rev. Al Sharpton, alongside a group of male prisoners. The ceremony came as part of a visit to the jail, which has seen reports of violent crime and inmate deaths, where Adams met with detainees over Easter weekend. Adams was seen joining Sharpton in prayer, being baptized and having his feet washed by the reverend. 'Having been arrested and then elected mayor, I reminded these young men that where you are is not who you are,' Adams...

Inmates of New York City's Rikers Island jail complex are reportedly running amok.Detainees at the understaffed jail have taken control of entire units, The New York Times reported.Inmates of New York City's long-beleaguered Rikers Island jail complex are running amok at the notorious lockup - and some have taken control over entire facility units, The New York Times reported on Monday."Rikers has long been dysfunctional, decrepit and dangerous," Zachary Katznelson told the news outlet. He's the executive director of a research and advocacy organization called Independent Commission on New York City Criminal Justice and Incarceration Reform.But Katznelson added, "What we...

Mayor Bill de Blasio rebuffed demands by Democratic lawmakers, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for an instant release of all Rikers Island detainees due to increasingly dangerous conditions at the jail, refusing to “just open up the gates.” “That’s not going to happen,” de Blasio said Wednesday during his daily press briefing, held remotely from Queens Borough Hall. “I respect the Congress member and her colleagues who signed that letter, [but] couldn’t disagree with them more,” he added. “It’s not going to happen, it’s not the right way to handle things.” On Tuesday, AOC along with Reps. Jamaal Bowman, Nydia Velazquez...

Gov. Kathy Hochul on Friday said she was ordering the immediate release of 191 inmates who are locked up on Rikers Island for what she called “technical” violations of their parole from state prison. Hochul made the announcement before signing into law the “Less Is More Act” that will stop the state from putting ex-cons back behind bars for missing appointments with their parole officers, violating curfew or testing positive for drugs or alcohol. The measure is set to go into effect on March 1, but Hochul said the ongoing crisis at Rikers meant there was no time to wait,...

Something was wrong. The chow hall line at New York’s Rikers Island jail had halted. For three hours, the men stood and waited, without food, until a correctional officer quietly delivered the news: A civilian chef was among those who tested positive for the coronavirus. “We was like, ‘What? The cook?’” said Corey Young, who spoke to The Associated Press last week by phone from Rikers. He and others wondered if the chef had sneezed on trays or into the food. Some men later floated the idea of a hunger strike to protest. “I don’t want to eat nothing that...

Convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein injured himself in Rikers Island jail when he fell while trying to walk on his own, according to a Page Six report. Weinstein spokesperson Juda Engelmayer told the New York Post Post gossip section that Weinstein fell on his head Saturday and may have suffered a concussion as a result. Weinstein, 67, had a heart procedure last Wednesday during which doctors inserted a stent, Engelmayer told CNN. He was moved Thursday to the infirmary unit at Rikers Island, New York's main jail complex, Engelmayer said. He's expected to be sentenced March 11 in New York State...

Top New York City jail officials are concerned there could be another "Epstein incident" once convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein is behind bars on Rikers Island, according to multiple reports. TMZ reported New York City Department of Correction bosses' fears, citing high-ranking officials who are afraid of an event similar to the death of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who was found hanging from strips of orange bed sheets inside his jail cell in Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan.While it's up to the city's corrections department to decide where inmates are housed, Judge James Burke said he'd ask that Weinstein be...

Harvey Weinstein was rushed to hospital by ambulance on Monday, shortly after being found guilty of raping and sexual assaulting two women. The disgraced Hollywood producer, 67, was said to have been redirected to Bellevue Hospital Center after suffering chest pains. A rep later confirmed he was suffering from high blood pressure and having heart palpitations. Judge James Burke had initially ordered Weinstein to be taken to Rikers Island prison immediately, until his sentencing on March 11. Weinstein was convicted by a New York jury of sexually assaulting former production assistant Mimi Haleyi in his apartment in 2006 and raping...

Thursday, the New York City Council will vote on the latest proposal to close the centralized detention facilities on Rikers Island and replace them with a borough-based jail system. The baseline estimate of how many inmates that system will be expected to accommodate by 2026 was recently revised down to just 3,544 — about half of its population today. When one considers (1) the seriousness of the charges most city jail inmates are facing, (2) the level of violence those inmates engage in behind bars and (3) the potential for future crime increases, one thing becomes crystal clear: There is...

Paul J. Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman who is serving a federal prison sentence, had been expected to be transferred to the notorious Rikers Island jail complex this month to await trial on a separate state case. But last week, Manhattan prosecutors were surprised to receive a letter from the second-highest law enforcement official in the country inquiring about Mr. Manafort’s case. The letter, from Jeffrey A. Rosen, Attorney General William P. Barr’s new top deputy, indicated that he was monitoring where Mr. Manafort would be held in New York. And then, on Monday, federal prison officials weighed in,...

Paul Manafort not going to Rikers Island, will remain in federal custody after DOJ rejects move, source says The Justice Department has rejected New York County District Attorney Cy Vance Jr.'s attempt to have former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort transferred to the notorious Rikers Island prison complex ahead of his pending state court trial, amid questions as to why the move was even contemplated in the first place, Fox News is told. Fox News first reported earlier this month that a New York State judge ordered the transfer at Vance's request. However, because Manafort has been convicted on federal...

The liberal media feigns horror over "lock her up" refrains. But when it comes to a Trump associate actually being locked up in a notoriously awful jail, well, that's a cause for mirth and hilarity. And thus it was that on today's Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough joked about Paul Manfort being confined at Rikers Island, which has been described as a "hellhole," as here, here, and "the most notorious jail in America."Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

Most people don't quite know what to make of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's alarm about Manhattan prosecutors' decision to throw President Trump's former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, into Rikers Island prison. It was an unprecedented move. Yet she's hardly a supporter of people connected to President Trump - she actually wants the president impeached. But she's right about what she's reading:

Female correction captain yanks officer's genitals during Rikers Island training session — landing him in hospitalA training area for correction officers on Rikers Island recently turned into a nutcracker suite. Correction Officer Mike Lynch was treated at a hospital last week after Capt. Shaseannia Pittman grabbed his privates during a training session gone bad, the Daily News has learned.-snipLynch went to the hospital to seek treatment and was back on the job Wednesday, instructing fellow officers, according to sources. The union representing correction captains said the incident never would have happened if the department used same-sex instructors to teach evasive...

The nation’s largest municipal jail guard union sued New York City on Friday, saying recent sweeping changes in city’s jails have empowered violent inmates and endangered correction officers. The lawsuit in Manhattan federal court alleged violence in city jails has increased 18 percent since the city instituted changes to how guards perform their work following a rash of alarming reports about the abuse of prisoners, particularly at the city’s main Rikers Island jail complex, where as many as 10,000 inmates are housed. The city and its officials have “created a substantial and imminent risk that Correction Officers will continue to...

The spying by the Obama administration on then-presidential candidate Donald Trump reportedly was even worse than what he has alleged. And it had nothing to do with Russia but everything to do with politics. Sources in the intelligence community claim the potentially illegal revealing of names, or unmasking, of people in the Trump camp who were under surveillance was done purely “for political purposes” to “hurt and embarrass (candidate) Trump and his team.” The bombshell revelations come from rank and file members of the intelligence community who are fighting back against a stonewall by the leaders at the nation’s spy...

Inside and outside of New York City's government, chatter is increasing about a once-unthinkable idea: shutting down the notorious Rikers Island jail complex. A coalition of dozens of advocacy groups says it intends to pressure the mayor and other elected officials to take a stand, arguing the 400-acre island in the East River where most of the city's 10,000 inmates are held is too broken to be fixed, plagued by a culture of brutality, misconduct and corruption. They are up against a formidable opposition that derides the effort as a fantasy that ignores political and practical realities. ...

Officials say they’re eliminating cash bail for thousands of New Yorkers accused of misdemeanor and non-violent felonies in an effort to divert them from the Rikers Island jail complex. An $18 million plan to be unveiled Wednesday will allow judges to instead require that people accused of certain crimes be monitored while they wait for their trial. …

New York City has roasted a man to death. Jerome Murdough, like a very large share of New York City’s homeless, was mentally ill. According to his family, he suffered from both bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, along with what his mother gently describes as “beer problems.” He was a former Marine who was in and out of homeless shelters, hospitals, and the occasional jail cell, with eleven misdemeanor convictions for trespassing, public drinking, drug possession, and the like. During what was an unusually bitter winter in New York, Mr. Murdough sought shelter in an unsecured stairwell in a Harlem housing...

Jerome Murdough was just looking for a warm place to sleep on a chilly night last month when he curled up in an enclosed stairwell on the roof of a Harlem public housing project where he was arrested for trespassing. A week later, the mentally ill homeless man was found dead in a Rikers Island jail cell that four city officials say had overheated to at least 100 degrees, apparently because of malfunctioning equipment. The officials told The Associated Press that the 56-year-old former Marine was on anti-psychotic and anti-seizure medication, which may have made him more vulnerable to heat....