Chapter One

WELCOME TO THE ROCK

The vilest deeds like poison weeds,
Bloom well in prison air;
It is only what is good in Man
That wastes and withers there....

—Oscar Wilde,
The Ballad of Reading Gaol

When I first met Angel Rivera in March of 1991, he was handcuffed to a chair at NYPD's Central Booking. I couldn't believe my luck: The elusive con artist whose scams I'd been writing about had finally been caught. The lieutenant from Special Frauds called and said I could interview him. I left my office and headed for One Police Plaza.

    As the cab sailed down the FDR, I tried to conjure up an image of Rivera. Although his female victims described his appearance as ordinary, I figured he must have some kind of charisma given the effect he'd had on them and the money he'd conned from them. Special Frauds described him as a "predator," a highly skilled con artist who posed as a casting director and promised his victims he'd make them stars.

    "He'd approach attractive females in the street," the lieutenant said, "wanna-be actress types—they're a dime a dozen in Manhattan—and tell 'em everything they wanted to hear."

    Baiting his "mark" with a stream of compliments and a phony business card, Rivera would say she had "just the look" he needed for an upcoming movie. He'd buy his victim a cup of coffee and display a portfolio of the actresses he'd made famous, luring her into his web with promises of one-hundred-dollar-an-hour all-day shoots. When he knew he had her, he'd let the ax fall.

    "You have a SAG card, right?" he'd ask. To work on a movie, actors must belong to the Screen Actors Guild and have a union card to prove it. Rivera hoped his victim didn't have a SAG card, and most times he was right.

    Feigning disappointment, he'd wrinkle his brow, take a sip of coffee. "Damn shame," he'd say. "As I said, you're perfect for the part. You got just the look we need."

   Then he'd fake the flash of an idea. "Wait a minute—I think I know someone at SAG.... Lemme see what I can do."

    Now he was doing her a favor, implying that she was worth a risk. He'd excuse himself, head to the nearest pay phone, and return with a smile. "Done deal," he'd gloat. "Today's your lucky day. He'll give it to you for a steal. Five hundred bucks and you're in."

    In most cases, if he'd gotten this far the woman would go to a cash machine and withdraw the money. Rivera would tell her to meet him later in the evening and the card would be ready.

    When she arrived, he'd be nowhere in sight.

    And now here he was, sitting in front of me, handcuffed to a metal chair, head bowed as if he were sleeping. In one of the strangest arrests Special Frauds ever made, Rivera had been caught by an off-duty cop. Attesting to the sheer volume of women he'd scammed, Rivera actually approached a woman he'd conned before. He'd forgotten her, but she hadn't forgotten him. He'd been thirty seconds into his rap when she started screaming: "Scam artist! Scam artist! This man's a thief!"

    A cop happened to be walking by, straight into the scene of the crime. He took off after Rivera and nabbed him as he ducked into an idling cab.

"Mr. Rivera?" I asked.

    He raised his head: large, bloodshot eyes; strong features; an oval-shaped face. He was a light-skinned black, of average build, and looked to be in his early forties. He wore a Yankees cap, khaki pants, and a dirty denim jacket. He looked exhausted.

    "How can I help you?" His voice was softer and more conciliatory than I'd imagined. In fact, his appearance was anticlimactic. Rivera was the first "real criminal" I'd met and he looked more like a high school janitor than a swashbuckling con artist.

    "I'd like to ask you a few questions," I said. "I've been writing about your scams in the paper...."

    "I know. I've seen the stories. I figured I was gonna get caught one of these days." He shrugged and shifted in his chair.

    "About the women you conned ..." I started. "The women you promised to make stars ... do you feel any remorse for taking their money?"

    "Listen, those women gave me their money," he said wearily. "I didn't force them to do anything. I didn't hurt anybody."

    A cop came over and told us to wrap it up. He was anxious to finish his shift and take Rivera to the holding cells beneath the courthouse where detainees await arraignment.

    "If you wanna know more," Rivera said, "you'll have to come interview me on Rikers. That's where I'll be for a while."

    I slipped him my card and said I'd see him there.

    For a month I tried to arrange the interview, but my calls to the Department of Correction's Public Information Office went unreturned. I was about to give up when I received a letter from Rivera. Somehow knowing my predicament, he explained it was far easier to get security clearance as "a friend" of an inmate rather than as a journalist. To help me out, he said, he put my name on his list of approved visitors. He enclosed the following week's schedule and circled the days I could visit.

    Immediately I thought he was setting me up. Like most crime-spooked Americans, I figured that he was a criminal and couldn't be trusted. Then again, I thought, what could he really do to me? He was in jail, on his way to prison upstate, and he wouldn't be out for a while. So I followed his advice, pretended I was his "friend," and set out for the dreaded Rikers Island.

New York's "carceral archipelago," to borrow from French philosopher Michel Foucault, squats in the East River about 100 yards from La Guardia International Airport. It was once a green and leafy oasis, eighty-seven acres of farmland owned by a Dutch family by the name of Rychen. Since the first jail opened in 1935, the island has been expanded by landfill to encompass 415 acres and hold ten separate jails, capable of housing over 16,000 inmates. There is a jail for women, which contains a nursery, and a jail for boys sixteen to eighteen years old. Two Staten Island ferries, converted into floating detention centers, are docked off the northern tip of the island and together hold over 300 prisoners. A modern 800-bed barge, known by inmates as the "slave ship," is moored off the South Bronx just opposite Rikers Island. With a huge power plant, three high schools, a firehouse, a hospital, a courthouse, a tailor shop, and a bakery, Rikers Island could be its own town. Its budget costs taxpayers $860 million a year, yet most New Yorkers have no idea where it is.

    Like most prisons and jails in America, Rikers Island performs an expert magic trick: It makes people vanish. It not only hides prisoners from public view, but in a double sleight of hand it keeps in those who want to get out and keeps out those who want to get in. As any visitor can attest, penetrating Rikers Island is a punishing experience.

    The journey begins on Queens Plaza South, a trash-strewn strip lined with fast-food joints, pawnshops, and after-hours clubs, a place where the pay phones are either out of order or so grimy you don't want to touch them. During the weekends, every twenty minutes or so, a small crowd gathers to await the Q101, the city bus to the Rock. The regulars, mostly mothers (or grandmothers) with toddlers, collect their inmate care packages, flick their cigarettes, and board the bus to Rikers.

    Half an hour later, you're traveling over the Francis R. Buono Memorial Bridge, a two-lane ribbon of highway separating the land of the free from the land of the jailed. The inmates say it's "the longest bridge in the world," taking "just minutes to cross over, but eternity to cross back." At the entrance to the bridge looms an intimidating billboard: CITY OF NEW YORK—CORRECTION DEPARTMENT, RIKERS ISLAND—THE BOLDEST CORRECTION OFFICERS IN THE WORLD.

    At the high point of the bridge, the view is surreal. From behind, the dazzling Manhattan skyline beckons like the Land of Oz. Whitecaps ripple the expanse of water below. Ahead sprawls a massive, low-lying detention complex ringed by coils of razor wire and a lethal electric fence.

    Visitors file into the Control Building, where they must produce valid photo ID before they proceed deeper into the bowels of the jails. If they cannot, it's back on the bus. Signs prohibiting cameras, tape recorders, cell phones, beepers, and weapons plaster the walls. An odd and enduring relic, the Rikers Island "amnesty box," sits off to the side. At first glance it looks like a mailbox. It is not. The amnesty box is where visitors can deposit contraband (drugs or weapons) without fear of arrest or reprisal. If they are caught smuggling contraband, however, they are arrested. In 1999, nearly 350 visitors were arrested on Rikers. Imagine that—being arrested in jail.

    As if on the set of a science-fiction movie, you then enter a bright red cylindrical booth. A bulletproof door seals shut behind you while an X-ray machine scans you head to toe for metal. If no metal is found, the door slides open and you're released to begin part two of the journey: boarding a small "route bus" that takes you to your designated jail.

    However, if metal is detected on (or in) your person, an Orwellian voice from inside the chamber bellows: "We beg you to come back and deposit metal objects in the chest on the doorway." I marvel at the choice of words—they beg me to come back? They are begging me to come to Rikers? What happened to "please"?

    Correction officials say that the futuristic scanners, which cost $50,000 apiece and were installed in June 2000, have been pulling in four times the usual amount of contraband. Among the most recent collection of castaways were knives, razors, scissors, dental picks, Walkmans concealing drugs, balloons stuffed with crack and marijuana, a knife that was hidden in a pen, and—get this—a stun gun.

    Even when the sun shines on Rikers, little cheer penetrates the dreary penal colony. Huge jets from La Guardia rip through the sky with a deafening roar; alarms and sirens sound off with regularity. Cars, commercial trucks, and blue and orange Correction Department buses crammed with inmates chug along the roadways. Black and Hispanic prisoners till the vegetable gardens surrounded by razor wire, bringing to mind images of slavery. On an average day, Correction Department buses log more than 3,500 miles transporting shackled inmates to courthouses in the city, or to reception centers on their way "up north"—to one of New York's seventy state prisons.

    From their tiny jailhouse windows, some Rikers prisoners are treated to a spectacular view: the orange rays of a Manhattan sunset reflecting off the city's gleaming skyscrapers. Freeworlders on the Rock describe the view as breathtaking; the inmates say it's heartbreaking. "So close and yet so far," they lament. I often think they have no idea just how far away the city is.

    Literally and figuratively, the mile-long bridge to Rikers Island is a dividing line between the Big Apple's haves and have-nots. About two-thirds of Rikers inmates are pretrial detainees who have been charged with, but not convicted of, a crime. They are detained because they cannot afford bail. Illustrating their poverty, one-quarter of Rikers inmates face bails of $500 or less. "Unlike white, employed, middle-class persons, who are perceived as being reputable and thus are generally released on their own recognizance or are able to make bail," writes criminologist Albert Roberts, these "disreputable persons are detained."

    When Ronald Lauder (son of Estée Lauder, founder of the cosmetic company) was campaigning for mayor in the 1980s, he took a trip to Rikers and was outraged to see that inmates were permitted to watch TV and spend an hour in the recreation yard. "If it were up to me, I would have them breaking stones to pebbles," he said, failing to realize that 65 percent of Rikers inmates are pretrial detainees, "innocent until proven guilty."

    Lauder's confusion about the basic difference between jails and prisons is common. Many people are not aware, for example, that whereas prisons house convicted felons (with sentences of one year or more), jails hold mostly pretrial detainees. In addition, jails house people convicted of misdemeanors (serving sentences of less than one year) as well as convicted felons awaiting transfer to state prison.

    Not surprisingly, criminologists have described jails as the "strange social hybrids" of the correctional landscape, as "detention centers for suspects." They have been called the "poorhouses of the twentieth century," the "ultimate ghettos," the "social garbage cans" used to discard "society's rabble."

    Indeed, Rikers Island is primarily a melting pot of recidivist inmates: drug users, dealers, and disorganized street people. Less than a quarter have been charged with violent crimes; the majority were arrested for possession or sale of drugs. Other demographics speak volumes about this exiled population:

• 92 percent are black or Hispanic, though blacks and Hispanics represent 49 percent of the city's population;

• 90 percent lack a high school diploma or GED;

• 30 percent are homeless;

• approximately 20 percent of female and 10 percent of male inmates are HIV-positive;

• 25 percent have been treated for mental illness;

• 80 percent have a history of substance abuse;

• about 75 percent return to Rikers within a year.

    Back in 1991, I wasn't aware of these statistics as I sat in the visiting room waiting for my "friend" to arrive. More obvious was that I was the only white person among a sea of black and brown faces. I felt like a lightbulb. This is liberal, integrated New York City, I thought, home of a hundred different cultures and ethnicities, certainly not the homogenous Midwest, the Deep South, or even South Africa, for that matter. Today I have grown used to the sight of so many black and Hispanic men behind bars, but my first glimpse of Rikers prisoners astounded me. Did blacks and Hispanics really commit all of the crime in this city, I wondered, or were they just the ones who got caught?

ANGEL: PART I

After spending a couple hours with Angel Rivera, another contradiction emerged: Far from the picture of a "conniving predator" NYPD's Special Frauds Squad had painted, Rivera was a rather likable fellow. Surely he was a hustler, and his scams had left a trail of disappointments and lighter wallets in his wake. But he was also witty and warm and seemed surprisingly honest when I asked him about his crimes.

    Before meeting Angel, I had interviewed two of his victims. One was a petite blond waitress who had recently moved to New York to become an actress. The other was a striking black woman in her late twenties with a master's degree in philosophy. Listening to their stories, I sympathized with the humiliation they experienced and the money they lost. But after coming to know Angel and his sisters, I felt worse for him.

    Angel Rivera was born and raised in one of New York's poorest neighborhoods, El Barrio, also known as Spanish Harlem. Here, he and his three sisters slept two to a bed in a three-room tenement on 100th Street and First Avenue. His mother died from a "home" abortion when he was five. His father was a drunk whose idea of punishment was making his children kneel on grains of rice until their knees bled, or beating them with wire hangers.

    Throughout high school, Angel shined shoes on the streets of Harlem and later found work as an elevator operator. But he was bright and ambitious and had higher aspirations.

    "I hated that no matter how hard I worked I was still poor," he said. "I'd come home after twelve hours on the job and see things on TV I wanted for myself. I felt I deserved them as much as anyone else."

    It was out of frustration to obtain "the good things in life," he told me, that he turned to conning women. For the first time in his life he felt powerful.

    Over the following years I spent many hours speaking with Angel and his sisters in a tiny, padlocked apartment in Washington Heights. They invited me to their cookouts and birthday parties and treated me like one of the family. I visited Angel when he was sent to prison upstate and when he thought about suicide at Christmastime. I assigned him the job of undercover prison reporter and penology tutor so that I could learn about prison from a prisoner and crime from a criminal. I helped him find a job when he was released, and today I consider him a friend.

Like most things "New York," Rikers Island represents an extreme: an extraordinarily expensive, vast, and complicated penal colony. It houses more inmates than the entire prison systems of thirty-five other states and has been described in the literature as "a more dangerous institution to manage than even maximum-security state penitentiaries."

    Not only is Rikers one of the most complex jailing systems in the United States, it is also one of the most expensive. While the average annual cost to house a person in state prison is approximately $25,000, New York City spends approximately $68,000 annually (about $175 daily) for every prisoner confined on the Rock. That's more than eight times what it spends to educate a child in public school, or as much as a college education. As the Reverend Jesse Jackson likes to say, "It costs more to go to jail than to Yale."

    Rikers stands out in another way as well: in the tremendous growth of its inmate population. Between 1980 and 1990, the number of inmates on Rikers tripled from 7,000 to 21,000, while the U.S. prison population at large "only" doubled from 500,000 to 1 million people.

    Between 1990 and 2000, the U.S. prison population doubled again. In fact, the United States, "the land of the free," rang in the year 2000 as the world's number-one jailer, with 2 million of its citizens behind bars. Another way to look at it is this: "In the early 1970s, there were about 200,000 people locked up in the United States," says Robert Gangi, executive director of the Correctional Association of New York. "Today, there are 2 million people behind bars—a growth of over 1,000 percent."

    "The situation we're in now is completely unprecedented," says Marc Mauer, author of Race to Incarcerate. "The number of people going through the system dwarfs that in any other period in U.S. history and virtually in any other country as well." Indeed, the United States has "overtaken Russia for the honor of having the world's highest incarceration rate," writes Anthony Lewis in The New York Times. Although America comprises fewer than 5 percent of the world's population, it holds a quarter of the world's prisoners. "I've been studying criminal justice trends for twenty-five years," says Todd Clear, one of the country's leading authorities on corrections. "And each year I think this can't continue. We can't keep doubling our prison population every decade. But we do. It's astounding."

    To comprehend the size of the American prison landscape, picture the entire populations of Atlanta, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Des Moines, and Miami behind bars. Then calculate your chances of becoming part of this landscape: For an American born in 1999, the chance of living some part of life in a correction facility is one in twenty; for black Americans, it is one in four.

(Continues...)

---

Excerpted from INSIDE RIKERS by JENNIFER WYNN. Copyright © 2001 by Jennifer Wynn. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

---