Rikers Island is one of those places that we all know about, even those of us who have never been there.

Rikers Island is an island that sits in the East River in the Bronx.  It is also home to New York City’s largest and most notorious jail.  It’s a jail that has a reputation for violence and corruption.  Over 100,000 people are admitted into Rikers per year and, on most days, the complex has a population of 10,000 prisoners.  (For comparison, my mom was born in a town that currently has a population of 1,200.)  Rikers Island is notorious for the number of prisoners who have died while in the jail.  It is estimated that 85% of the inmates are pre-trial defendants, people who have yet to be convicted of anything but who either didn’t get or couldn’t afford bail.  The other 15% are serving short sentences.  Rikers Island is a county jail that has a reputation for being as bad as any state prison.  You don’t have to be from New York City to know about Rikers Island.  The jail has become so notorious that Rikers Island has developed an international reputation and is often held up as a symbol of everything that’s wrong with the way that incarceration is handled.

Lock-Up: The Prisoners of Rikers Island was filmed for and aired on HBO in 1994.  The documentary is now 30 years old and the population of the jail has grown considerably since it first aired.  That’s a frightening thought because the jail that is seen in the documentary was already overcrowded, dirty, and dangerous.  The documentary features interviews with both guard and prisoners.  We follow the guards as they search cells and confiscate weapons and drugs.  We meet a prisoner who has AIDS and who is hoping to be transferred to a drug rehab.  (He explains that he was born addicted and he’ll probably die addicted if he’s left in Rikers.)  We meet several of the pregnant women who are incarcerated in the jail and listen as they wonder what would happen if they went into labor when there’s not a guard around.  We watch as the guards uneasily deal with the prisoners who have asked to be incarcerated in the jail’s “gay wing.”  We meet several inmates who are obviously dealing with untreated mental illness.  A lawyer tries to talk to his client and gets in a shouting match with another prisoner.  We meet a notorious criminal named Eddie White, who explains that a life sentence means that he no longer has to follow the rules.  We meet a lot of people in this documentary and what they all agree on is that being locked up is Hell.

It’s hardly a balanced documentary.  The filmmakers are clearly on the side of the inmates but that’s okay.  Considering that the inmates have essentially no control over their own lives while they’re in Rikers, it can be argued that they deserve to have someone on their side.  Most of the inmates talk about their regrets but, as the documentary ruefully observes, most of them will eventually end up returning to Rikers even after they’re released.  One woman cries when she learns her baby might be ill but, when we see her during her second stint at Rikers, she blithely comments that her baby was taken away by “the city.”  As with so many inmates, she explains that she was set free with no training as to how to remain free.  As an addict, she has discovered the system is more interesting in punishing her addiction than treating it.

The biggest problem with the criminal justice system is that it rarely rehabilitates but instead creates a situation where no one can get or take advantage of a second chance.  30 years after it was released, Lock-Up reminds us that this is hardly a new problem.