Captives: How Rikers Island Took New York City Hostage

Jarrod Shanahan

May 2022 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Greg Tremblay

About this audiobook

Just about everybody knows the name Rikers Island. A fixture of pop culture and underground prison lore alike, the sprawling East River jail complex has become synonymous with both the horrors of mass incarceration and the structurally-racist class domination at its core. But how did Rikers Island get to be this way? America's Jail represents a scrupulously researched answer to this question, written for a lay audience in an accessible narrative form. Befitting the high stakes of the present Rikers debate, the issues explored in this work have broad implications for the future of mass incarceration in the United States and beyond. Drawing from extensive archival research, decades of journalism, interviews, prisoner testimonials, and firsthand experience, Jarrod Shanahan tells the story of how so many miserable jail facilities ended up on one tiny East River islet, by charting the unwitting cooperation between prison reformers, who built jail infrastructure on the optimistic wager it could be used for social good, and the forces of organized retrenchment, who ensured this would never come to pass. By tracing the failure of jail reform in postwar New York in detail, America's Jail casts considerable doubt on jail reformers' ability to solve the problems of incarceration with better incarceration, even in shiny new jails.

About the author

Jarrod Shanahan is an assistant professor of criminal justice at Governors State University and the author of dozens of articles, short stories, and zines. He is a former inmate at the Eric M. Taylor Center at Rikers Island.

Born in one far-flung corner of the U.S., near Portland, Greg Tremblay has worked in diverse fields, including paramedicine, blacksmithing, SCUBA, and even a few practical jobs. Trained in vocal and stage performance, Greg brings a passion for educational nonfiction and character-intensive fiction to his narrations.