To get to Rikers Island, visitors must catch the Q100 bus, which winds through Queens and makes its final stop near the base of the heavily guarded Rikers Island Bridge. The jail, which sits in the East River, a stone’s hurl from the LaGuardia Airport runway, is technically part of the Bronx.
When you step off the Q100 bus on Rikers Island, the scent of saltwater hangs in the air, at least in warm-weather months. Within a few feet, however, you’re staring at cement on cement and inhaling some combination of cigarettes, steaming blacktop and too many people.
I went to Rikers Island eight times between August and October and successfully visited Ruben Rodriguez five times at three different houses: Robert N. Davoren Complex, the juvenile house; George Motchan Detention Center, an adult house; and Otis Bantum Correctional Center, which has Rikers’ largest punitive segregation unit, the Central Punitive Segregation Unit.
[For more of this story, written by Theresa Fisher, got to http://jjie.org/reporters-note...n-the-island/107961/]
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