De Blasio is primarily responsible for the horrors of Rikers

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How did things go so bad, so fast, on Rikers Island? Disastrous mismanagement, Mayor Bill de Blasio effectively promoting the crisis.

It wasn’t until prison staff protested the terrifying working conditions in Rikers prisons in August that elected officials began to visit and the public realized the enormity of the crisis.

This week, The Post published photographs exposing the nightmare. The photos showed conditions at Otis Bantum Correctional Center from July through September, where hundreds of inmates languished for days and weeks, in violation of city regulations requiring new admissions to be allocated housing within 24 hours. The disgusting conditions date back over a century to pre-Rikers prisons and prisons.

The unlawful law, other “reforms” and emergency releases during the pandemic have reduced the prison population to an all-time low, down more than half from just a few years ago – but conditions in the 400-acre prison complex are worse than ever for inmates and guards.

The morale of correctional officers was hit hard before COVID, as their union leader was caught making personal gains from their retirement funds and the city and state increasingly tied their hands when it was about maintaining order. The total ban on punitive segregation, along with other relaxation of discipline rules, has resulted in the worst of the worst among the prison population.

One thing “no image can capture” is “the stench,” which is “the smell of death,” Senator Jessica Ramos said.

Meanwhile, de Blasio’s three correctional commissioners have all been great “reformers” but unable to actually deal with Rikers, let alone find a constructive way to work with the guards and their union.

Then COVID struck and correctional officers (who, by contract, don’t have to justify absences) stopped showing up en masse. Those who remained were stuck in triple and quadruple shifts – and management basically put their hands up.

Now the guards are injured almost daily, which encourages no one to report to work. Basic maintenance has collapsed, from repairs to cell doors to cleaning up human waste.

When he finally visited Rikers after an absence of 4.5 years, the mayor only met the very leadership that the federal observer overseeing Rikers said needed “outside expertise”, accused of “systemic mismanagement” and qualified as “failure”. After this session, de Blasio said the efforts to improve conditions had been successful.

After embracing the idea of ​​replacing Rikers, the mayor ignored it. He succeeded in reducing the population (as required by his plan for new prisons). . . but otherwise clearly decided to let the existing prison rot in the meantime.

Was this a strategy to gain support for his plan? With this mayor, sheer incompetence is always the most likely explanation.

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