[10] Rikers Island has had a reputation for violence, physical and mental abuse and neglect of its inmates, and has attracted press and judicial scrutiny that has resulted in numerous rulings against the New York City government.

[13] The Rikers Island complex, which consists of ten jails, holds local offenders who are awaiting trial, serving sentences of one year or less, or are temporarily placed there pending transfer to another facility.

The rest of the facilities, all built in the last 67 years, make up this city of jails, in addition to the Vernon C. Bain Correctional Center, a floating barge (described below), as well as schools, medical clinics, ball fields, chapels, gyms, drug rehab programs, grocery stores, barbershops, a bakery, a laundromat, a power plant, a track, a tailor shop, a print shop, a bus depot, and a car wash.

The Vernon C. Bain Correctional Center (VCBC), an 800-bed barge, was installed on the East River at the end of Hunts Point near the Fulton Fish Market to accommodate the extra inmates.

[40] The initial plan for acquiring the vessel, because of the way New York City makes capital purchases, had to begin at least five years before the keel was laid, during the tenure of Ed Koch.

[36] On February 1, 1957, Northeast Airlines Flight 823 crashed onto Rikers Island shortly after departing LaGuardia Airport, killing 20 and injuring 78 out of a total of 95 passengers and 6 crew.

[42] A drawing by artist Salvador Dalí, done as an apology because he was unable to attend a talk about art for the prisoners at Rikers Island, hung in the inmate dining room in J.A.T.C.

[43][44] During the AIDS crisis in the 1980s and 1990s, at the request of the Association for Drug Abuse Prevention and Treatment (ADAPT) and the Executive Director Yolanda Serrano, the prison granted early release to terminal HIV-positive inmates so that they could die peacefully in their own homes.

In September 2016, the campaign organized a march from Queens Plaza to the Rikers Island Bridge, calling on then-Mayor Bill de Blasio to close the complex.

[51] According to The Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice, key strategies in shrinking the Rikers population have included addressing causes of case delays, identifying individuals that could be granted alternatives to jail time, and improving programming and discharge services.

[54] The idea of closing the prison complex within 10 years was endorsed by former Mayor Bill de Blasio on March 31, after the New York Post leaked the findings of the Lippman Commission.

According to a 2017 city-sponsored report, incorporating Rikers Island into the airport's footprint would allow for the construction of a new, longer runway and additional terminal space, resulting in an estimated 40% increase of flight capacity.

She was brought to jail still dressed in formal wedding attire, locked in a cell, and forced to strip and expose her cavities for search in the hour it took for her daughter to arrive and post bail.

On October 4, 2007, the New York City Department of Corrections conceded that tens of thousands of nonviolent inmates taken to Rikers Island on misdemeanor charges had been wrongly strip-searched in violation of a 2002 court settlement, and were entitled to payment for damages.

[65] A Village Voice article lists a roll call of 2008 scandals at Rikers, including the case of officers who allegedly passed accused cop killer Lee Woods marijuana, cigarettes, and alcohol; the February indictment of correctional officer Lloyd Nicholson who used inmates as "enforcers", and the April 27 suicide of 18-year-old Steven Morales (who allegedly killed his infant daughter) in the high-security closed-custody unit.

[66] On February 4, 2009, The New York Times reported that "the pattern of cases suggests that city correctional officials have been aware of a problem in which Rikers guards have acquiesced or encouraged violence among inmates."

The Times added that "There have been at least seven lawsuits filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan accusing guards of complicity or acquiescence in inmate violence at Rikers, a complex of 10 detention facilities which, along with several other jails around the city, hold about 13,000 prisoners, most of whom are pretrial detainees.

"[68][needs update] On June 1, 2007, Captain Sherman Graham and Assistant Deputy Warden Gail Lewis were arrested by the New York City Department of Investigation (DOI) for covering up an assault on an inmate.

[84] On January 25, 2016, President Barack Obama wrote an article in The Washington Post criticizing the "overuse" of solitary confinement in American jails, basing his arguments largely on Browder's case.

This group, led by Captain Budnarine Behari, had participated in the brutal beating of Robert Hinton, a mentally ill inmate, while he was hog-tied, because he had protested being moved from his cell by sitting down.

The New York City Department of Correction's widely criticized plan was to restructure the classification of prisoners and create a new protective custody system which would include 23-hour-per-day lockdown (identical to that mandated for disciplinary reasons) for moving vulnerable inmates to other facilities.

"[94] "Eric Adams, a former NYPD captain, swept into the mayor's office promising a pro-law enforcement agenda that included supporting the old guard that had long decided how things ran on the island.

Adams replaced the reform-minded jails commissioner Vincent Schiraldi with his own pick, Louis Molina, whose administration immediately pushed out top department leaders supportive of the LGBTQ+ unit and shelved a draft policy directive aimed at getting more trans and gender-nonconforming detainees into gender-aligned housing.

This institutional reversal has stranded numerous trans and gender-nonconforming detainees in dangerous, male housing units for weeks or months on end, subjecting many to egregious forms of physical and sexual violence, according to dozens of internal emails, Department of Correction records, and interviews with more than 20 people who work or live in city jails, including current and former corrections staffers, incarcerated trans women, jail guards and attorneys.

"[94] In August 2014, US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara, issued a report condemning the systematic abuse and violation of prisoners' constitutional rights.

[14] During the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City, inmates at Rikers were unable to follow the safety measures suggested by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to avoid contracting COVID-19.

[103] By October 2021, The New York Times reported that as a result of staff shortages exacerbated by the COVID pandemic, inmates were virtually running the jail and lawlessness, violence and chaos reigned.

[118] Staten Island native Eugene "Sonny" Castelle was battling an addiction to pain killers when he was arrested in Florida for heroin possession with intent to sell.

[119] Layleen Xtravaganza Cubilette-Polanco was a 27-year-old Afro-Latina transgender woman who died at Rikers Island, New York City's main jail complex, on June 7, 2019, in solitary confinement.

[128][129] Conditions on Rikers Island drastically deteriorated during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, due to a combination of viral outbreaks, staffing shortages, and exacerbated mental health crises among detainees.