When Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, thousands of inmates were left locked in jails and prisons for days while the rest of the city evacuated.
I just read an article in Solitary Watch titled "Locked Up and Left Behind: Hurricane Irene and the Prisoner's on New York's Rikers Island", and realized that though I wour with the criminal justice population, I had completely forgotten about what would happen to the people loacked up in the many deteniton facilities around the city. But it looks like I wasn't the only one.
A few days after Hurricane Irene came sweeping up the east coast without causing major damage to New York City, it is easy to brush of the mandatory evacuations as just the city being overly cautious. But the day before the hurricane was to hit, the city was a in a panic. I was anxiously following developments and the mandatory evacuation of low lying areas of the city. Nearly everyone I know filled their bathtubs on Saturday night and charged their phones, convinced that we'd be without power and wake up to howling winds. The anxiety was real and the possiblity for some major damage was as well. However, with all of the preparations made by the city, including shutting down the entire public transportation system, Riker's Island was not evacuated. it wasn't even in an evacuation zone, though built on a landfill and surrounded by water. In fact, the Department of Corrections admitted that there was no evacation plan for the 12,000 prisoners on Riker's Island. We are lucky that Irene didn't hit. Many of us were a little bummed out that it really seemed like NOTHING happened in the city aside froma few downed branches (we do realize that parts of the country were really devastated). But when we think about what could've happened had the storm been a little bit worse, I think we can all agree that we avoided a major tragedy. Had Irene lived up to her forecast, we don't know if we would be facing a Katrina-like situation with a vulnerable, immobile population trapped in locked cells full of water. I hope that the city DOES create an evacation plan. No matter what crime someone committed (and Riker's is a jail housing mostly midsdemeanor and low-level felony offenders usually serving no more than a year), they don't deserve to be abandoned or forgotten.
