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Riker's: Whose island is it anyway?

By Eric M. Weiss, Staff Reporter

OK, it's in the Bronx, but it has a Queens street address. It's represented in Washington by a congressman from Manhattan. And while no one calls it home, nearly 16,000 men and women sleep there every night.

It's Riker's Island, the city jail.

"I know, I know, it's absolutely crazy," said Vivian Jones, an aide to Rep. Charles Rangel, the Harlem Democrat whose district includes Riker's. "I don't know how we wound up with it, but it's ours now."

The city-run jail, actually 10 separate penal facilities, sits on an island in the East River between the Hunts Point sewage treatment plant in the Bronx and La Guardia Airport in Queens. Inmates held at Riker's are serving sentences of less than a year or are awaiting trial, sentencing or transfer to an upstate institution.

While the island is within the borough's borders, the only access is over a bridge in Queens, hence the jail's address: Hazen Street, Queens, N.Y. 11370. But if an inmate commits a crime while on the island, it's handled by the Bronx district attorney. And those who are incarcerated are counted as residents in Rangel's district.

"You can't even find the blasted thing," said Jones, who runs the congressman's office on 125th Street in Manhattan, as she searched a large wall map of Rangel's 15th Congressional District.

The island is named after a farmer, Guisbert Rycken, who bought it in 1667. The city purchased it 100 years ago this June, but the first jails but the first jail didn't open on Riker's until the early 1930s. Before then, New York's main jail was located on Blackwells Island, now called Roosevelt Island.

Over the past 60 years, Riker's Island has been expanded by landfill from 90 acres to its present 400, and today contains A [its own] power plant, laundry, bakery and shops for the inmates. In addition to the Riker's Island complex, the city maintains smaller jails in other boroughs. As of last Wednesday, 18,161 people were behind bars citywide, more than in the prison systems of 40 states, according to the corrections department.

But Rangel does not get receive many votes from his constituents at Riker's. While inmates who haven't been convicted of a felony can still vote, they have to do so by absentee ballot, using their previous address. Though an inmate may sleep, eat and bathe there, Riker's Island is no one's official home.

Some at Riker's still write to their congressman, but many of Rangel's responses are returned by the post office because the inmates have moved on. Jones said Rangel's office also receives letters requesting help from other inmates throughout the state system.

Some of the letters are even polite. One inmate recently sent a sympathy card when he heard that Rangel's mother died, Jones said, adding, "I thought that was very nice."


The Bronx Beat, April 3, 1995