If you've never noticed Rikers Island on subway car maps before, you will now.
A new guerilla campaign called #SeeRikers is distributing stickers that draw attention to the city's controversial central jail on MTA subway maps where it isn't labeled, asking commuters to "put Rikers back on the map."
The jail complex in the middle of the East River, which most reach by the Q100 or Q101 bus via Queens, has drawn unrelenting scrutiny over the past two years for reported cases of brutality and dysfunction. Both Gov. Andrew Cuomo and City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito have argued the best solution is to close Rikers, and City Hall has quietly explored a proposal to move its more than 10,000 inmates into renovated borough detention centers and new jails in city neighborhoods.
The jail is unmarked on maps inside subway cars, but #SeeRikers stickers, clear with arrows indicating "Rikers is here," are changing that.
Circulated as a part of an exhibition about the social impact of incarceration nationwide at the New School, the stickers are the creation of three graduate students at Parsons The New School of Design, Estefanía Acosta de la Peña, Laura Sánchez, and Misha Volf, Prison Photography first reported.
"Ten thousand people live there [on Rikers Island], and yet it’s not labeled,” de la Peña told CityLab. “A lot of people can’t even find it on the map."
"Whether an accidental oversight or an intentional omission," says the website explaining the students' campaign. "Rikers’ 'disappearance' from the subway map is in many ways emblematic of a broader cultural willingness to overlook the places, policies, and practices that support the systemic violence of mass incarceration."
New Yorkers who want to participate in the project can pick up stickers at the New School's Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, request some online here, or print their own.
The MTA considers the stickers to be defacement, spokesman Kevin Ortiz said in an email to DNAinfo.
"Not only is this vandalism, but they are mistaken in their basic premise," Ortiz wrote. "Neighborhoods, including Rikers Island, are labeled on subway maps. The only exception is the subway car map (with larger station type) which eliminates ALL neighborhood names since there’s no space."
