{"id":38949,"date":"2011-08-27T18:46:44","date_gmt":"2011-08-27T23:46:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=38949"},"modified":"2011-11-08T22:27:40","modified_gmt":"2011-11-09T03:27:40","slug":"new-york-prisoners-left-in-the-path-of-hurricane-irene","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2011\/08\/27\/new-york-prisoners-left-in-the-path-of-hurricane-irene\/","title":{"rendered":"New York Prisoners Left in the Path of Hurricane Irene"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Caroline Heldman’s blog<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

News media are comparing Hurricane Irene to Hurricane Katrina in ways that\u00a0allow us to forget that\u00a0Hurricane Katrina\u00a0was a\u00a0humanmade disaster<\/a>, but in one way, these events are similar \u2013 prisoner evacuation. New Orleans officials chose not to evacuate 7,000 inmates, some of whom were trapped in flooded cells and later left on a bridge for days without food and water, as detailed in this\u00a0post<\/a>.\u00a0 Officials in New York have made the same decision with Hurricane Irene.<\/p>\n

Elizabeth Furth, a former student who has participated in\u00a0rebuilding efforts in New Orleans, sent in this map<\/a> showing that Rikers Island\u00a0is not part of the City’s evacuation plan:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Riker’s Island is the unzoned white blob in this close up:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Mayor Bloomberg announced that Riker’s Island\u00a0would not be evacuated at a recent press conference, despite the fact that the island is surrounded by areas with the second highest evacuation rating (Zone B).\u00a0 Other New York islands on the map are in Zone A (mandatory evacuation) or Zone B, but Riker’s has no evacuating rating,\u00a0perhaps because the Department of Corrections doesn’t have an evacuation plan.\u00a0 According to the\u00a0New York Times<\/em> blog<\/a>, “no hypothetical evacuation plan for the roughly 12,000 inmates that the facility may house on a given day even exists. Contingencies do exist for smaller-scale relocations from one facility to another.”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Solitary Watch<\/a> reports that Rikers Island was built on landfill, which is especially vulnerable to disasters. Rikers Island may weather Hurricane Irene without incident, but\u00a0this disaster has\u00a0again revealed how prisoners are considered disposable in times of crisis.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Caroline Heldman’s blog. News media are comparing Hurricane Irene to Hurricane Katrina in ways that\u00a0allow us to forget that\u00a0Hurricane Katrina\u00a0was a\u00a0humanmade disaster, but in one way, these events are similar \u2013 prisoner evacuation. New Orleans officials chose not to evacuate 7,000 inmates, some of whom were trapped in flooded cells and later left […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1848,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2056,126,8118,304,283],"class_list":["post-38949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crimelaw","tag-disaster","tag-organizationsinstitutions","tag-the-state","tag-prejudicediscrimination"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1848"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38949"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41567,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38949\/revisions\/41567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}