Two prisoners died just over an hour apart Friday — one at Rikers Island, and one after a medical emergency on a bus en route to the facility — city correction officials said.
The deaths follow five others this year that legal aid organizations have described as “Rikers-related” — people who died in the Department of Corrections’ custody, or shortly after release. According to the Board of Corrections, five people died at Rikers in all of 2024.
The deaths throughout the year have fueled calls from prisoner support organizations to put Rikers into receivership – an independent governance structure that would take authority over the jails from Mayor Eric Adams’ administration…