Solitary Watch reports that the Riker’s Island prison isn’t going to be evacuated even though similar small islands and barrier beaches surrounding New York City are in Zone A. In fact, according to the NY Times’s City Blog, the city’s Department of Corrections says “no hypothetical evacuation plan for the roughly 12,000 inmates that the facility may house on a given day even exists.”
That’s not surprising, actually, given the logistical nightmare it would be to relocate 12,000-17,000 prisoners, especially in an emergency situation when city resources are already stretched to their limits and beyond. The Solitary Watch piece reminds us what happened in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina when prisoners and guards in Orleans Parish Prison were left in inhumane conditions for days on end. But perhaps that means that as a nation, we should look at the conditions that have led to the US having easily the highest incarceration rates in the world. If we don’t have so many people in prison, maybe it’s not such a strain to relocate them in the event of a natural disaster.
