RIKERS ISLAND CORRECTIONAL FACILITY

It's considered part of the Bronx and is in practically every cop show and movie. People in orange jumpsuits talking to lawyers. They are a bit angry or indifferent and they are making plea bargains, trading information for reduced sentences. Seems sort of harmless, really. Just sitting jail doing nothing.

But the truth is much different. Guards beating inmates (http://tinyurl.com/y7kbct2u - just one example), meatloaf with rat poison in it, indoor temperatures in 100s, and inmates with nothing to do all day. Rikers Island was a landfill. Meaning New York garbage was dumped there. And apparently not a lot of work was done to mask that when the jail was built because in the summer when the ground thaws, the sewer stink arises.

When inmates get into a fight the guards bet on who will win. One guard ran a drug and prostitution ring in the jail. You can read about it in his book CORRUPTION OFFICER. He paid female guards to service male inmates for $40. When you consider that same guard got $200 for smuggling in a Happy Meal for an inmate, that $40 is quite the insult. And guards don't pay female inmates anything for having sex with them.

Many of those incarcerated on Rikers Island are innocent. They just can't afford bail. These are people who don't have the streetsmarts and violent defense-mechanisms of the guilty. They get beaten and raped and robbed. And it can go on for years before their trial comes up and they are found not guilty and released from Rikers. http://tinyurl.com/y7syuz2p

There have been lawsuits, of course, and the federal government has found Rikers Island Correctional Faciltiy to be so heinously violent that they have demanded that New York City close it. Good. But let's hope the new facilities are better - better managed and with better hiring policies. I remember a skit on Saturday Night Live mocking the state of Texas about the death penalty policy. Yeah, New York doesn't execute, but a stay in their jail will make you want to kill yourself.

So, who are the "good guys" and who are the "bad guys." Makes you rethink those TV cop shows.