In New York, the raw pain of a mother for her son who died in Rikers Island prison

“He succumbed to an inhuman system,” cries this 39-year-old woman in a testimony delivered to AFP from her home in Brooklyn.

“Cancer”, “rat hole”, “house of horror”: former prisoners of Rikers Island still trembled 30 years later when telling AFP last September about the daily life of this gigantic prison complex where they passed , among others, Harvey Weinstein and Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

Violence, drugs, suicides and the Covid-19 pandemic since 2020: the conditions of detention in this prison on the East River between the Bronx and Queens have been known to be appalling for decades.

Now under pressure, New York City and State authorities have promised reforms and renovations, but a court in May found the US Corrections Service guilty of “obstructing” access to medical care for some inmates.

– Too late –

For Lezandre Khadu, it is too late.

His son Stephan had been remanded in custody in December 2019 pending trial for complicity in murder. He died there in September 2021.

A medical examiner concluded that the young man had succumbed to meningitis, an infection that could have been treated, accuses his mother who denounces a lack of care. “No one cared. My son would still be here if he had been taken care of. He was not incarcerated to die,” she laments.

According to the prison services, the death of Stephan Khadu “is the subject of an investigation”.

– Death record name –

At least 16 people died in 2021 in New York prisons – or a few days after their release – and almost all of them at Rikers Island. Many of these deaths are suicides.

This is the highest number since 2013, following seven deaths in 2020 and three in 2019. For the first five months of this year, six Rikers inmates have already lost their lives.

“Every death is a tragedy,” admits Louis Molina, controller of New York prisons.

In a press release, he assures that the prison services “are working actively to improve the conditions of detention and are committed to ensuring the safety and well-being of all those who work and reside” in these establishments.

For former prisoners and New York officials who spoke to AFP last September, insecurity and sanitary conditions are “ten times worse” than in the 1980s and 1990s and out of control since the pandemic. of Covid-19 that brought New York to its knees in 2020.

A state parliamentarian, Emily Gallagher, had denounced a “humanitarian crisis” in Rikers: “Garbage everywhere, food infested with maggots, cockroaches, worms in the showers, feces and piss”.

Today, Rikers remains “a horror film”, testifies to AFP Brian Carmichael, who has just spent two months there. He denounces the violence of criminal gangs and unsanitary infrastructure.

The prison opened in 1932 and earned a reputation as a cradle of violence.

In the 1990s, Rikers Island had up to 20,000 inmates, around a third of the total prison population in France.

They are 6,000 today. Most are black and Hispanic people, the most disadvantaged, awaiting trial.

– Celebrities –

Celebrities are sometimes locked up there before their possible trials.

Former International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn was spectacularly incarcerated there in May 2011, along with former all-powerful Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, British Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious and American rapper Tupac Shakur, both since deceased.

Former New York Mayor Bill de Blasio promised the prison would close in 2026 and be replaced by four smaller facilities. But his successor Eric Adams, who appears to be a tough man, has not yet relaunched the project, valued at 8.7 billion dollars.

Lezandre Khadu, who often demonstrates in front of the Rikers gates, promises that she will fight “until the death” for the prison to close: “Not just for my son but for all sons”.

Source: AFP

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