Mamdani’s Rikers Visit Showed Mercy For Inmates, But None For Their Victims

(Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Zohran Mamdani wants New Yorkers to see his Ramadan visit to Rikers Island as an act of compassion. He broke fast with inmates, posed for smiling photos on prayer mats, and praised the “mercy, dignity, and humanity” he witnessed behind bars. But for crime victims, correction officers, and anyone who’s ever worked inside a jail, those images were another gut punch from a mayor reserving public empathy for the least deserving—none for the victims, endless for the people who created them.

Rikers is a jail, not a prison, just like the Allegheny County Jail in Pittsburgh, where I spent 14.5 years working as an investigator for the criminal courts. These places hold defendants charged with the most violent crimes pending trial. In a system warped by cashless bail, soft-on-crime politics, and woke release policies, even people charged with homicide are sprung loose. That makes the population still sitting in Rikers all the more chilling. If the system manages to hold on to someone pretrial, imagine the danger that person poses to society. (RELATED: Mayor Mamdani’s Bad Company Is Normalizing Extremism In Post-9/11 New York)

From a safe distance, people romanticize the men inside Rikers: dignity, healing, mercy, as if jails are filled with harmless souls failed by society. They aren’t. City and county jails lock officers and civilian staff in with vicious offenders, predators, repeat criminals—the ones even the wokest courts and defense attorneys can’t release. Corrections officers can’t turn their backs for a second. Seeing pictures of them pouring juice and facilitating Mamdani’s carefully staged display of compassion for inmates was painful. Unbearable, really.

Earlier this week, I broke fast at Rikers Island with New Yorkers in custody, Department of Correction staff, Commissioner Stanley Richards, and Councilmember Yusef Salaam. It was a night that will stay with me for quite some time. People sharing what little they have: breaking… pic.twitter.com/6Serzy6Mt2 — Mayor Zohran Kwame........

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