Rikers is, and has been, a site of torture for all who are incarcerated there. This dire situation urgently necessitates a real solution, namely, the immediate shuttering of all the jails on Rikers, the defunding of the NYC Department of Corrections, and investment in anti-carceral projects that do not create more suffering and harm. These solutions must not expand and legitimate a present and future of human caging. We urge that the people currently incarcerated on Rikers and in the Rose M. Singer Center — along with criminalized people, formerly-incarcerated people, organizers, and everyone committed to abolition — create and fight for an alternative plan that begins with universal pretrial release, investing in non-carceral, non-custodial community-based resources, and the decriminalization of survival.
