Rikers Island, New York City’s main holding center for its most violent and most innocent inmates, is synonymous with corruption and brutality. After decades of failed reform of the ten prison complex island, Mayor de Blasio gives a flimsy and disappointing plan for closure which will take another decade. When countless families and individuals, notably Kalief Browder, are broken by “torture island” what will it take to convince this administration that this is an outdated shithole? A third of our nation’s 2.7 million prison population is in local jails, which get less press than the federal prisons but have worse conditions. But local movements like #CLOSERikers are exposing how imperative it is to close these barbaric debtors prisons which affect communities of color disproportionately.