A unique insider perspective of daily life in New York City's most notorious house of correction
While most people behind bars at Rikers Island are detainees awaiting the settlement of their cases, a smaller population have already been convicted and are serving sentences deemed too short for the state prison system. These stints are called "city time." The sentences range from a few days to a year, and are generally served within large, open dormitories lacking in privacy and sanitation. Within these spaces, incarcerated people reproduce an elaborate set of rules, rituals, and relationships, as a means both of survival and of giving meaning to the time taken from them.
Written by David Campbell and Jarrod Shanahan, who both served sentences at Rikers, City Time reflects its authors' personal experiences and observations of short-stay incarceration to present a nuanced and vivid account of a social world kept locked away from the public eye. The authors reconstruct the daily realities of sanitation, nourishment, recreation, work, and other necessary activities, and emphasize the complex interpersonal relationships that emerge in response to city time. Simultaneously, they paint a grim and urgent picture of structural racism, class violence, and the disastrous lack of mental health and substance abuse resources for poor New Yorkers, who are shuttled in and out of city time sentences as "frequent flyers."
Beginning with the authors' own processes of intake, and ending with the ritual of late-night release, City Time takes readers behind the splashy headlines to depict, in intimately human terms, the rich and variegated social world unfolding, at this very moment, on Rikers Island.
Rezensionen / Stimmen
"A riveting portrayal of everyday life at the jail. The authors' unhurried cataloging of seemingly endless quotidian deprivations fascinates. Readers will be rapt." (Publishers Weekly, STARRED) "Engrossing, intimate... [Campbell and Shanahan] are deft and balanced collaborators, writing with academic rigor, as well as humor and compassion." (Kirkus Reviews) "David Campbell and Jarrod Shanahan offer an up-close study of the banality and brutality of short-term incarceration at Rikers Island. Their methodical analysis of the relationships, routines, economies, and architectures of the infamous jail is punctuated by vibrant and evocative insights into the sensory experience of incarceration - the smells, sights, sounds and tastes of the quotidian depravities, degradations, frictions, and resistances that marked their 'city time.'" (Judah Schept, co-author of The Jail is Everywhere: Fighting the New Geography of Mass Incarceration) "As Rikers Island notorious jail is on the verge of closing, City Time provides a timely and invaluable archive written by two men who have experienced its everyday life from inside. This exceptional document, which unveils the meaninglessness of short-stay imprisonment, is a must-read for anyone who wants to reflect on carceral punishment." (Didier Fassin, author of Prison Worlds. An Ethnography of the Carceral Condition) "City Time serves as a how-to manual for maintaining one's humanity in the face of the constant repression and mundanity of life on Rikers Island.. [and] will stand as a testament to the often arbitrary and needlessly brutal ways that the criminal legal system has sought to control and suppress marginalized populations and those willing and able to fight back." (Inquest) "Perhaps a copy of City Time for Eric Adams is in order." (Public Seminar)
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ISBN-13
978-1-4798-2903-3 (9781479829033)
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Schweitzer Klassifikation
David Campbell (Author)
David Campbell is a writer, translator, and former antifascist political prisoner. He was a PEN America 2021 Writing for Justice Fellowship finalist, and his writing has been featured in numerous publications, including Slate, Huffington Post, CUNY Law Review, New York Focus, Truthout, and the Appeal. He is the translator of Revolutionary Affinities: Toward a Marxist-Anarchist Solidarity.
Jarrod Shanahan (Author)
Jarrod Shanahan is Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at Governors State University. He is the author of Captives: How Rikers Island Took New York City Hostage; co-author of States of Incarceration: Rebellion, Reform, and America's Punishment System; and co-editor of Treason to Whiteness is Loyalty to Humanity, a Noel Ignatiev reader.
