After Mayor Bloomberg announced that he would not be evacuating the prisoners at Rikers Island under the threat of then-Hurricane Irene, a backlash grew against the administration given the total shutdown of the MTA, mandatory evacuations of thousands of New Yorkers, and the horrific lessons of Katrina. "It is appalling that the City administration is abandoning the men and women at Rikers," Center for Constitutional Rights director Vince Warren said in a statement. CCR urged that the lives of the 12,000 prisoners on Rikers "should not be treated as less valuable than those of other New Yorkers." more ›

While residents living in Zone A areas head to shelters, and the rest of the city hunkers down for the arrival of Hurricane Irene, one group of New Yorkers who live on a tiny island between Queens and the Bronx are staying put: prisoners at Rikers Island. In a press conference yesterday, Mother Jones reports that Mayor Bloomberg said, "We are not evacuating Rikers Island." As the city's Department of Corrections tells the New York Times, "no hypothetical evacuation plan for the roughly 12,000 inmates that the facility may house on a given day exists." more ›

Oh, the cruelty! To save money on the city budget, inmates will now have to survive on just one ounce of grape jelly a day, down from two. The Post reports that the jelly reduction will save $1.5 million next year. But what of the poor prisoners, forced to ration one measly ounce of jelly between eight six slices of bread a day! To make matters worse, it seems like grape jelly is the only option in city prisons. We're sure criminals would think twice if they knew they'd be rotting in prison with no marmalade. more ›

The NYPD has had to throw out several chains used to restrain prisoners in transport after finding they were too easy to escape from. Designed by Peerless Handcuff Co. in Springfield, Mass, the shackles were used for about six months, and were equipped with a large link connecting the cuffs to the chain. According to a memo, this means "the prisoner could open the unused cuff and slip it through the oblong link to detach himself from the daisy chain." Too bad no one told Weezy. more ›

If Plaxico Burress fans want an up-to-date jersey of the Super Bowl hero wide receiver, they're going to have to ditch those #17 duds in favor of his new number, 09-R-3260. The former Giant star left court and headed to Ulster Correctional Facility where he was given a shave and a haircut and strip searched out of the jeans he was wearing. Burress neglected to arrive at prison in the notorious sweatpants that sent him there. more ›

An unofficial memo is circulating through NYPD precincts warning officers to be on guard against perpetrators who conceal blades in their cell phones and other hand-held devices. The handout shows how you can easily hide a razor blade in the battery compartment of a T-Mobile Sidekick, and also reminds officers about the recent arrest of a suspect in Harlem who converted his cell phone into a stun gun. A police source tells amNY that the improvised weapon "was unlikely to cause much harm, as the jolt was described as low-level." And then there are the hospital meal trays you've got to watch out for! Cops assigned to guard hospitalized prisoners are being warned that meal trays have a vanity mirror that can easily be fashioned into a makeshift shiv. The vanity mirror is in a second-level compartment and that "can pop up for easy use by a patient." Of course, one way to eliminate that threat would be to serve the prisoners' meals on regular trays, but then officers would be forced to guard prisoners with food stuck between their teeth, and we don't pay them enough for that. more ›

Academy Award-winning director Errol Morris was on hand last night for a Tribeca Film Festival screening of his new documentary Standard Operating Procedure, a nuanced exploration of the detainee abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Those familiar with Morris’s innovative oeuvre won’t be surprised to hear that, far from a tendentious indictment of the perpetrators, his film is a circumspect consideration of some of the factors that contributed to those infamous photographs of humiliation. [Today, the NY Times' movie critic Manohla Dargis calls it a "blockbuster of a documentary."] more ›

One of the NJ prisoners who escaped from a Union County jail by chiseling through cement blocks (hiding their progress by taping posters over the growing hole) three weeks ago was captured last night. Thanks to a tip, police found Jose Espinosa in an apartment just a few blocks away from the jail. more ›