Some 350 convicted people are crowded onto Rikers Island awaiting transfer to prisons upstate due to continued ripple effects from the state prison strike, according to jail officials.
The backlog has led city jailers to seek permission to house more people in dorms than regulations allow — a situation advocates say will exacerbate conditions at the already notorious city jail complex.
Rikers is meant to detain people accused of crimes but not yet tried and convicted. In a letter to the city Board of Correction, jails commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie said her department expects Rikers’ population to continue increasing in the coming weeks as more people are sentenced to prison and the state system doesn’t have the staff to accept them…