Rikers Island is the name of New York City's largest jail facility, as well as the name of the 413.17-acre (1.672 km˛) island on which it sits, in the East River between the boroughs of Queens and the Bronx, adjacent to the runways of LaGuardia Airport.

The jail complex, operated by the New York City Department of Correction, has a budget of $860 million a year, a staff of 10,000 officers and 1,500 civilians to control a yearly inmate population of up to 130,000.

The official permanent population of the island, as reported by the United States Census Bureau, was 12,780 as of the 2000 census.

During Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's term as mayor of New York, the jail filled to overflowing, and an 800-bed barge was installed on the East River to accommodate the extra inmates.

The island is named after Abraham Rycken, a Dutch settler who moved to Long Island in 1638 and whose descendants owned Rikers Island until 1884, when it was sold to the city for $180,000 and has been used as a jail in one form or another ever since.

A drawing by artist Salvador Dalí, done as an apology because he was unable to attend a talk about art for the prisoners at Rikers Island, hung in the inmate dining room from 1965 to 1981, when it was moved to the prison lobby for safekeeping. The drawing was stolen in March 2003 and replaced with a fake: four prison guards were arrested and charged, and though three later pled guilty and one was acquitted, the drawing has not been recovered.


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