Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and three other House Democrats from New York called on Mayor de Blasio and Gov. Hochul Tuesday to release all inmates held on Rikers Island, citing a long-running pattern of “human right violations” at the jail.
Ocasio-Cortez made the extraordinary demand in a letter to de Blasio and Hochul issued jointly with Reps. Jamaal Bowman, Nydia Velazquez and Jerrold Nadler, who chairs the powerful House Judiciary Committee.
In addition to freeing the roughly 6,000 inmates on the island, the four lawmakers wrote that the jail itself should be “immediately” shuttered and federal funding for its operations seized.
“The current conditions experienced at Rikers are inhumane, unconstitutional and a public health crisis,” they wrote. “We believe federal funds should be used to decarcerate and shut down the facility immediately, as well as provide social, economic, psychological and physical health support to all those that are released to ensure their safe reentry into our community.
Neither the mayor nor the governor have entertained the idea of freeing all Rikers inmates as they scramble to address the spiraling crisis at the overcrowded jail.
Rather, de Blasio and Hochul have pushed for releasing a subset of inmates locked up for technical parole violations. Hochul signed a bill into law last week that would make it so minor parole violations are no longer punishable by jail, but most components of that measure won’t take effect until 2022.
A spokesman for de Blasio did not immediately return a request for comment on the lawmakers’ letter.
Hochul did not offer outright support for releasing all Rikers inmates, but her press secretary, Hazel Crampton-Hayes, said the governor “is committed to continuing to work with city and federal partners on solutions.”
Making their case for releasing all inmates, Ocasio-Cortez and her colleagues wrote that more than 4,600 of the roughly 6,000 inmates on Rikers are being detained pretrial — representing over 76% of the jail’s population. Nearly 1,500 inmates are detained for misdemeanor or nonviolent crimes, they also noted.
The congressional members said that despite being placed under federal monitoring in 2018, Rikers has seen an increase in inmate deaths, with 11 people dying in custody this year alone.
Conditions at the jail are devolving as well, and state legislators witnessed “nothing short of a humanitarian crisis” when they toured Rikers earlier this month, the pols wrote.
“Assembly member Jessica González-Rojas witnessed, ‘countless men being piled on top of each other, laying in their own urine and feces and people not getting the care that they needed. There was a transgender woman who was placed in a male facility and not getting her hormones or medical care,’” they wrote. “It is unconscionable to allow these conditions to persist any longer.”
©2021 New York Daily News. Visit nydailynews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
—-
This content is published through a licensing agreement with Acquire Media using its NewsEdge technology.
If you can’t do the time, then don’t do the crime!
facilities should be clean. have the inmates clean them.ome just don’t care. of course if they had not done wrong they ould not be there.work dettailmight make them rehabilitate some. they have to have respect for others and themselves.you cannot release crminals nd have a suge of crmes. Let AOC ern her salary and volunteer at the prison. maybe she can learn what hard ork is. not just running her mouth thar does no good for anyone she has been a farce since she came on the scene.her life was not like she put forth when she was campaigning. how pelosi let’s her run the huse i’ll never know. another reason to retire her ,too! biden.kamala.pelosi,shumer do not walk on water as they think. they just lie thier ay through. as a statement from our Vp once said it’s ok to lie that’s politics great representatives aren’t they biden buffaloed his way through the senate for all those years
IMO< these prisons are not HARSH enough!!!
Gee is aoc willing to entertain a few high level criminals in her place, she can fix them some nice drinks give them some food and whatever they need if they promise not to commit any more crimes.
Maybe Joe can give them some military weapons when they’re released in her neighborhood. Just like he did for the Taliban.
Exactly. That’s the trouble with these ivory tower liberals. They don’t have to live with the consequences of their miserable recommendations and decisions. It’s hard to believe that ANYONE could be as brainless as AOC obviously is.
THEY NEVER DO.. AND as demented as some are, Even if they DID suffer from those consequences, they would STILL BE this brainless.
“Bright Power, a big name in solar power fired their entire workforce after Ocasio-Cortez stuck her nose where it didn’t belong and convinced the solar workers to form a union. Now, rather than having full-time employees they’ve went back to the way that they used to do things which is to just subcontract the work out.”
“I am told this is a garbage disposal,” Ocasio-Cortez explained – either publicly revealing her ignorance or engaging in supreme trolling. “I’ve never seen a garbage disposal. I never had one in any place I’ve ever lived. It is terrifying. I don’t know what to use it for, or what its purpose is…..At one point, Ocasio-Cortez asked, “Is this environmentally sound?”
“Unemployment is low because everyone has two jobs. Unemployment is low because people are working 60, 70, 80 hours a week and can barely feed their family.”
Entertain nothing! Force her to take at least 6 as permanent house-guests.
AND force her to STAY IN THE HOME while those crooks are living there!
let her give her salary to do good.not destroy everything she can .she and her cohorts don’t lov America they want to destroy. with thier action thay should not be allowed to be in office
More AOC stupidity….
“A 17-year-old can walk into a shop and purchase an assault weapon.” — WRONG! 17 year olds cannot buy any kind of gun in America. Under federal law, the minimum age to buy a handgun from a licensed dealer is 21. But the age limit drops to 18 if the gun is being purchased from a private, unlicensed seller, which could be a neighbor or someone online, or at gun show. (The Hill)
“She is, she is the leader of, of– no no, she, I mean, um, um, Speaker, or rather Leader Pelosi, hopefully, um, you know, we’ll see, she’s uh, she’s the current leader of the party and I think the party absolutely does have its leadership in the House, we our leadership in the Senate as well.”
I laughed when she said that.. THE LEFT HAVE BEEN the ones who made the age limit laws for guns increase…
BUT, I’m sure that she thinks the people being held for January 6th incursion is JUST FINE!
Of course, those nasty people came within miles of her and scared her! How dare they upset her, But, it is OK to turn killers loose on New Yorkers. Not in her neighborhood, even if she is never there.
But of course.. THose were ‘right wing terrorists’… RHEEE!
Exactly!!! You stole my thunder!
I don’t have a problem with this, as long as we move them all into her building in DC and put fencing and armed guards around the perimeter to stop anyone from escaping. Mater of fact they can dump Biden, Piglosi and Co in there as well.
Maybe we should put them up in the Ritz-Carlton, huh, AOC? They should be richly rewarded for their disservice to society, right?
Better yet, let’s house them at the capital… they would fit right in with the criminal democRATS and the squad of loony toons
That’s the thing. YOU JUST KNOW THEY will never ever have to face any of the downsides to these insane ideas, because THEY NEVER HAVE TO LIVE With them…
She is such a loony toons buffoon… Just what we need, more criminals on the streets to victimze the communities… How about housing them
in the capital or maybe the white house… they would be right at home with the democRAT criminals….
the entire democRAT party are insane… and this idiot AOC and the squad are out to destroy the country… unleash hell upon our country..
God help us all before they completely rip this country apart…
OK… so lets not correct what’s “inhumane” …just let them out… that should make them once again useful law abiding citizens. If this jackass had 3/4 of a brain she’d be a halfwit!
Problem is that none of the scum in Rikers are human beings so nothing is inhumane about any of the *** that goes on there. They all are scum and need to die a long, miserable, painful death.
Just how long are “we the people” going to put up with AOC and the rest of the squad and their idiotic and dangerous and offensive proposals? These people were elected by uninformed voters who were either radicalized Muslims or just plain horrible people who want our country to be forced into becoming the socialist states of America! All who voted for them should be extremely proud of themselves – NOT!
WAKE UP AMERICA AND STOP VOTING FOR SOCIALIST LEANING PEOPLE!
Unfortunately, those who VOTED these demented evil twaddles in, ARE JUST AS DEMENTED and soul-less as they are.
Hmmm a little deflection going on here from her massive ethics complaints.
By all means, let them out to live in her district.
Let them live in her house.
REQUIRE Her to live in the same home, AND PAY OUT Of her own pocket, to finance their living!
AOC was so worried about being raped on Jan 6, wait till these guys get out and find her house, she should have a ball. They keep using the word..Unconstitutional… I don’t think ONE of them even know what the word means. Pretty obvious.. !!!
I remember seeing an episode of the old Mr. Ed show when the horse was wearing glasses. Now I see the bug eyed donkey face wearing glasses made by the coca cola corp. Let the prisoners stay at her house.
Come on midterms, it should be interesting.
YOU Assume, the dem fraud machine, WON’T do to the rest of america, what they already did in CA, GA, Mi and the like, and STEAL THINGS!
The plan of action is to resettle these criminals along with illegal immigrants into her neighborhood. Then maybe she will change her tune.
THough i would love nothing better, UNLESS WE CAN KEEP those illegals and criminals, JUST IN HER HOOD, they will eventually spread out, like a malignant cancer…