Monday, January 09, 2023

Inside the Notorious, Terrifying Rikers Island

There's only one way to get on Rikers Island and one way to get off—a narrow, forty-two-hundred-foot-long bridge spanning a part of the East River. At the ribbon cutting in 1966, Mayor John Lindsay called it the "Bridge of Hope." Forty years later, in 2006, the rapper Flavor Flav dubbed it the "Bridge of Pain." For some of the hundreds of thousands of souls who have made the passage over the past five decades, a trip to Rikers may be the first time they will sleep somewhere away from home. For others, it's their only chance for a bed and a warm meal. For some, it might be the place where they find themselves fighting for their lives. And still others may never make it out. The memories of their first day on Rikers are ingrained in the minds of the people who worked, visited, and served time there. It's an experience no one forgets.

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