A “history of the present,” NO EVACUATION PLAN critically examines Riker’s Island, one of New York City’s most notorious jails from its construction to its projected closure. The toxic origins of the island, its slow violence, and the repetitive history of prison reform in New York City are underrepresented in strategic planning for the future of the island, incarceration in New York, as well as our city’s cultural memory. NO EVACUATION PLAN is an urgent attempt to make sense of generations of rot, 18 years of underground fire, and a tradition of concealing carceral structures in concrete buildings on city blocks. 

It is impossible to quantify the human cruelties that have taken place at Riker’s. Inmates have been left without water for days when the pipes break--which happens due to the underground methane explosions and shoddy construction. Inmates have no air conditioning in the summer, earning the jail a nickname: “the Oven.” The methane gas gives off a virulent odor that is sometimes so strong that it sets off the gas alarms. At least 7 corrections officers have been diagnosed with cancer in association with their habitual over-exposure to methane gas on Rikers Island.  

Inmates--including those at Riker’s--are often the first bodies deployed towards lethal labor (clean ups, body recovery) and sent to the frontlines of climate disasters (fighting forest fires). While the fruits of the inmate’s labor have been habitually used to ameliorate disaster, there is no evacuation plan for the island, an island that is connected to the city by only a flimsy, two-lane bridge. Though prison labor is a known cruelty, the specific conditions of these incidents set a worrying precedent for our future: how dangerous emergency work will be off-loaded to inmates in a world with an increasing number of natural disasters due to the climate crisis.

Here Robert Nixon’s framework of “slow violence” takes on multifaceted meanings, referring not only to the slow violence of toxins and waste but also to the slow violence of incarceration infrastructures which have proliferated themselves through neoliberal logistics and reforms. The distribution of the inmate population into existing smaller “state of the art” correctional facilities located discreetly within each borough embeds Riker’s inmates back within the city they were formally expelled from through urban planning (Foucault). A single carceral location divides, and its mitosis becomes harder to mobilize against.

In order to imagine a future without human confinement and carceral economies, we must look again at our cities, what they leave visible and what they render unseen. The undertaking of NO EVACUATION PLAN is to contend with the telling of a narrative that began long before us and whose consequences will be felt long after we are gone. We echo Rob Nixon’s question: “How can we turn the long emergencies of slow violence into stories dramatic enough to rouse public sentiment and warrant political intervention, these emergencies whose repercussions have given rise to some of the most critical challenges of our time?”