Rikers Island is New York City's main jail complex, as well as the name of the 413.17 acre (1.672 km²) island on which it sits, in the East River between Queens and the mainland Bronx, adjacent to the runways of LaGuardia Airport. The island itself is part of the borough of the Bronx, though it is included as part of Queens Community Board 1 and has a Queens ZIP code. The jail complex, operated by the New York City Department of Correction, has a budget of $860 million a year, a staff of 7,000 officers and 1,500 civilians to control an inmate population of 14,000. The official permanent population of the island, as reported by the United States Census Bureau, was 11,355 as of 2009.

The island is thought to be named after Abraham Rycken, a Dutch settler who moved to Long Island in 1638 and whose descendants owned Rikers Island until 1884, when it was sold to the city for $ 180,000. It has been used as a jail ever since.

The Rikers Island complex, which consists of ten jails, holds local offenders who are awaiting trial and cannot afford or cannot obtain bail or were not given bail from a judge, those serving sentences of one year or less, and those temporarily placed there pending transfer to another facility.

Facilities located on the island include Otis Bantum Correctional Center (OBCC), Robert N. Davoren Complex (RNDC, formerly ARDC), Anna M. Kross Center (AMKC), George Motchan Detention Center (GMDC), North Infirmary Command (NIC), Rose M. Singer Center (RMSC), Eric M. Taylor Center (EMTC, formerly CIFM), James A. Thomas Center (JATC), George R. Vierno Center (GRVC) and West Facility (WF). Bantum, Kross, Motchan, and Vierno house detained male adults. Taylor houses sentenced male adolescents and adults. Davoren primarily houses male inmates who are of ages 16 through 18. Singer houses detained and sentenced female adolescents and adults. North Infirmary primarily houses inmates who require medical attention from an infirmary. West Facility houses inmates who have diseases that are contagious.

The average daily inmate population on the island is about 14,000. The daytime population (including staff) can be 20,000 or more.

The only access to the island is from Queens, over the unmarked 4,200 foot (1.28 km) three lane Francis Buono Bridge, dedicated on November 22, 1966, by Mayor John Lindsay. Before the bridge was constructed, the only access to the island was by ferry. Transportation is also provided by the Q100 Limited stop bus service, which runs around - the - clock. There are also privately operated shuttles that connect the parking lot at the south end to the island. Bus service within the island for visitors visiting inmates is provided by the New York City Department of Correction.

The North Infirmary Command, which used to be called the Rikers Island Infirmary, is used to house inmates requiring extreme protective custody, inmates with special health needs, mentally ill inmates, and inmates undergoing drug detoxification, as well as some regular inmates. The rest of the facilities, all built in the last 67 years, make up this city of jails. There is also the Vernon C. Bain Correctional Center, a floating barge. New York City's jail system has become something of a small town. There are schools, medical clinics, ball fields, chapels, gyms, drug rehab programs, grocery stores, barbershops, a bakery, a laundromat, a power plant, a track, a tailor shop, a print shop, a bus depot and even a car wash. Rikers Island has been referred to as the world's largest penal colony. For comparison, Europe's largest correctional facility, Fleury - Mérogis Prison sits on 180 acres (0.73 km²) and houses 3,800 prisoners.

The island was used as a military training ground during the Civil War. The first regiment to use the Island was the Ninth New York Infantry, also known as Hawkins' Zouaves, which arrived there on May 15, 1861. Hawkins' Zouaves was followed by the 36th New York State Volunteers on June 23, which was followed by the Anderson Zouaves on July 15, 1861. The Anderson Zouaves were commanded by John Lafayette Riker who was related to the owners of the island. The camp of the Anderson Zouaves was named Camp Astor in compliment to millionaire John Jacob Astor Jr. who provided funding for the army, and who appears to have made a significant contribution to the raising of the Anderson Zouaves in particular, with the Astor ladies being credited with the manufacture of the zouave uniforms worn by the recruits of this regiment. Rikers Island was subsequently used by numerous other Civil War regiments, but the name "Camp Astor" was specific to the Anderson Zouaves and did not become a general name for the military encampment on the island.

The island was bought by New York City from the Ryker family in 1884 for $ 180,000 and was used as a jail farm. The facility was commonly referred to by New Yorkers as simply "The Island"; for example, that is what it is called in O. Henry's 1905 short story The Cop and the Anthem.

In 1932, the city opened a jail for men on the island to replace its dilapidated jail on Blackwell's Island (now Roosevelt Island). Landfill was added to the island in 1954. It enlarged the original 90 acre (360,000 m²) island to 415 acres (1.68 km²), enabling the jail facilities to expand. The original penitentiary building, completed in 1935, was called HDM or the House of Detention for Men; it became a maximum security facility called the James A. Thomas Center and closed due to structural issues in 2000.

During Mayor David Dinkins' term as mayor of New York, the jail filled to overflowing, and an 800 bed barge was installed on the East River to accommodate the extra inmates. The barge is called the Vernon C. Bain Correctional Center (VCBC), and is also known simply as "The Boat". VCBC is located at 1 Halleck St, Bronx, NY 10474, at the end of Hunts Point, near the recently relocated Fulton Fish Market. The keel for the Vernon C. Bain was laid in 1989 at the Avondale Shipyard in New Orleans. Upon completion, VCBC was towed up from Louisiana to its current mooring, and attached to two Crandall Arms. It opened for use as a facility in 1992. Originally it had been leased to the NYC Department of Juvenile Justice, while Spofford Juvenile Detention Center was under reconstruction. VCBC was formerly known as Maritime Facility #3 (MTF3); facilities 1 and 2 were reconstructed British military transport barges, or BIBBYs (British Industries Boat Building Yard), used during the Falklands War, both of which could house 800 soldiers, but only 200 inmates after their conversion. MTFs 1 and 2 were anchored on either side of Manhattan at East River pier 17, near 20th street, in the Hudson River. In addition, there were two smaller 1930s era Staten Island Ferry boats, both converted to house 162 inmates each. The ferry boats were sold for salvage about 2003, and the owner of the shipyard that built VCBC, Avondale Shipyard, bought the two BIBBYs. VCBC is the only vessel of its type in the world. Prior to modification for use by New York City, it cost $161 million to construct. The initial plan for acquiring the vessel, because of the way New York City makes capital purchases, had to begin at least five years before the keel was laid, during the tenure of Ed Koch.

A drawing by artist Salvador Dalí, done as an apology because he was unable to attend a talk about art for the prisoners at Rikers Island, hung in the inmate dining room in J.A.T.C. (HDM) from 1965 to 1981, when it was moved to the prison lobby in A.M.K.C. (C95) for safekeeping. The drawing was stolen in March 2003 and replaced with a fake; three Correction Officers and an Assistant Deputy Warden were arrested and charged, and though three later pled guilty and one was acquitted, the drawing has not been recovered.

The segregated unit at Rikers for LGBT prisoners, known as "gay housing," was closed in December 2005 citing a need to improve security. The unit had opened in the 1970s due to concerns about abuse of LGBT prisoners in pretrial detention. The New York City Department of Corrections' widely criticized plan was to restructure the classification of prisoners and create a new protective custody system which would include 23 hour per day lockdown (identical to that mandated for disciplinary reasons) or moving vulnerable inmates to other facilities. Whereas formerly all that was required was a declaration of homosexuality or the appearance of being transgender, inmates wanting protective custody would now be required to request it in a special hearing.

In February 2008, Correction Officer Lloyd Nicholson was indicted after he allegedly used a select group of teenage inmates as enforcers under a regime called "the program," as well as allegedly beating inmates himself. However, "The Program" has been known to exist for well over a decade and is unique to the adolescents. The inmates use it as a test for other inmates and system of control amongst themselves.

On October 4, 2007, the New York City Department of Corrections conceded that "tens of thousands of nonviolent inmates taken to Rikers Island on misdemeanor charges had been wrongly strip - searched in violation of a 2002 court settlement, and were entitled to payment for damages. As many as 150,000 such inmates have been searched at Rikers Island since 2002, lawyers for the inmates said... The policy was kept in place despite a United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruling in 2001 that strip - searches of misdemeanor suspects were illegal, unless officials suspected that they were carrying contraband..."

[Lead lawyer Richard D.] Emery charged in his papers that department officials "repeatedly resorted to lying to cover up deliberate indifference to the continued practice of humiliating detainees by forcing them to strip naked in groups."

In an alleged July 2008 rape case reported by The Village Voice on August 5, 2008, the alleged victim claimed "that someone entered her cell in the 1,000 bed Rose M. Singer Center while she was asleep, sometime before 6 a.m. on July 3. She says the intruder (or intruders) bound and gagged her with bedsheets and then used a dildo like object to sexually assault her. Other inmates may have acted as lookouts during the alleged assault. The woman, who was being held on grand - larceny charges for the past three months, was discovered at about 6 a.m. by an Officer and a Captain who were touring the building. The Officer saw her lying on her back on the floor of her cell with bedsheets wrapped around her neck, mouth, and legs. She had also been blindfolded. The incident was reported to central command at 7:30 a.m., and the woman was transported to the Elmhurst Hospital Center. Because she did not share a cell with anyone, a major question is how the alleged assault happened in the first place. Officials will not talk about the investigation, and there is no word on whether any arrests have been made."

The same Village Voice article also lists a roll call of 2008 scandals at Rikers, including the case of Officers who allegedly passed accused cop killer Lee Woods marijuana, cigarettes, and alcohol; the February indictment of corrections officer Lloyd Nicholson who used inmates as "enforcers", and the April 27 suicide of 18 year old Steven Morales (who had killed his infant daughter for crying too much) in the high security closed - custody unit.

On February 3, 2009, The New York Times reported that "the pattern of cases suggests that city correction officials have been aware of a problem in which Rikers Officers have acquiesced or encouraged violence among inmates." The Times added that "There have been at least seven lawsuits filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan accusing Officers of complicity or acquiescence in inmate violence at Rikers, a complex of 10 detention facilities which, along with several other jails around the city, hold about 13,000 prisoners, most of whom are pretrial detainees. None of the seven suits have gone to trial. In the three that were settled, the city admitted no liability or wrongdoing."