betef Inside a Rikers Island Kitchen, Dull Knives and Critical Jobs

data de lançamento:2025-03-26 04:56 tempo visitado:198

As New York City’s troubled jail complex tries to improve its food, the people who cook there see a higher mission.

66jogo Inside a Rikers Island Kitchen, Dull Knives and Critical Jobs

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Luis Reina was preparing dinner for a crowd: turkey stew, rice and cucumber salad. The recipes were simple — chop the vegetables, brown the meat — but the process was anything but straightforward.

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Each box of ingredients had to be searched for contraband. The knife was tethered to the counter by a sturdy chain, and the metal spoons came from a cabinet flanked by security guards. The sharp-edged lids from tomato cans had to be tossed into a trash can inside a locked cage. Several kitchen assistants were clad in jumpsuits and carefully patted down before they could start work on the meal — for 3,800 people.

Mr. Reina, 56, is a cook on Rikers Island, New York City’s notorious 415-acre jail complex in Queens. He commutes two hours from Flatbush, Brooklyn, to prepare meals for the jail population and staff alongside roughly 50 other cooks in the larger of two kitchens on the island.

“They looked at her like she had four heads,” said Debbie Mesloh, Ms. Harris’s communications director at the time, about her appearance a month later at the district attorneys’ conference in Santa Barbara, a conclave of conservative, throw-the-book-at-them prosecutors.

ImageOne of two kitchens on Rikers Island. It operates around the clock, and the cooks prepare every breakfast, lunch and dinner for detainees.ImageThe long walk to the kitchen at the Anna M. Kross Center requires passing through several gates and a metal detector.ImageSome detainees, all nonviolent offenders, work in the Rikers kitchens and earn an hourly wage of $1.45.

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