Last U.S. prison ship in NYC set to close. Why was it open this long?

By James On Oct 31, 2023

Kenneth Williams spent his entire life in Brooklyn, but it wasn’t until one evening in 2018, while chained across a narrow walkway, that he learned about New York City’s last floating prison. He remembers the murky waters of the East River below him, the stench of mold and a sinking feeling that quickly became literal.

“Every now and then you could feel the boat falling into the mud,” Williams said. “It was a stark reminder that this place was not meant for human confinement.”

Docked in the shallows on an industrial edge of the South Bronx, the Vernon C. Bain Correctional Center is a five-story prison ship that stretches the length of two football fields and resembles a container ship loaded with cargo.

It came in 1992 as a temporary measure to ease overcrowding at Rikers Island, the city’s main jail complex, for inmates awaiting trial. Three decades later, the 800-bed lockup – the last operational prison ship in the United States – is finally closing.

The ship will be completely cleared by the end of this week, officials said, as part of a broader plan to replace the city’s long-troubled prison system with a network of smaller prisons. For now, most of the approximately 500 people trapped on the ship will be transferred to Rikers Island, according to the Department of Correction, although the prisons there will eventually close as well.

Inmates and advocates have long viewed the boat as a grim remnant of mass incarceration, an enduring symbol of the city’s inability to reform the dangerous prisons on New York’s outskirts, largely out of sight of most residents and tourists.

In recent years, the unusual naval prison has drawn attention mainly for its failures: last September, Gregory Acevedo jumped from the top of the ship to his death; The year before, Stephan Khadu died after contracting a form of treatable meningitis while in custody.

Darren Mack, co-director of the advocacy group Freedom Agenda, described the boat as a “modern slave ship” used by the department to store prisoners, mostly black and Latino men, with minimal supervision. While noting that the closure is long overdue, he added: “Moving people to the same hellish conditions on Rikers is not the solution.”

The Vernon C. Bain, the last of an armada of floating prisons that New York City used in the late 1980s and early 1990s, is located across the river from Rikers Island, between a wastewater treatment plant and a seafood wholesaler.

Inmates are given an hour of relaxation every day on a caged upper deck, where they recently played basketball on a sunny morning. Otherwise, their only natural light shines through the ship’s small portholes.

Those who have spent time on board say the boat rocks in the river’s current. The faded blue-and-white exterior – very different from the freshly painted surfaces visible in the 1993 film “Carlito’s Way” – is known to leak in the rain, occasionally shorting out the electrical system.

Inside, rust is cracking from the walls and inmates say they are crammed into dormitories that become stiflingly hot in the summer, with cots spaced just inches apart. “If you were facing the person in the bed next to you, your knees would be touching,” said Mr Williams, who was held there for a few months and has since been released. “When they snored, you could smell their breath.”

The use of maritime prisons in the United States has long been controversial, dating back to the early days of the Revolutionary War, when thousands of Americans died aboard British ships parked in New York Harbor.

Since then, the concept has been used sparingly — most notably during California’s gold rush — often amid accusations of cruelty and neglect, a recent study shows.

In the 1960s, a proposal by New York’s corrections commissioner to house inmates on repurposed barges was rejected by other local officials, who said the boats would give visitors a false impression of the city. That sentiment began to change in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when drug arrests during the crack epidemic sent Rikers Island’s population to historic highs.

By the time the Vernon C. Bain boat arrived in the South Bronx, the city had already deployed four other floating prisons—including two converted city ferries and a former troop ship with the dissonant nickname, the “Love Boat”—as cheap, temporary Services.

Mayor Edward Koch, an early champion of the idea, assured reporters that seasick inmates would be given Dramamine and dismissed questions about the viability of the boats, calling it “better accommodations” than Rikers Island.

Decades later, Mr. Khadu is said to have reached a similar conclusion as he awaited trial on a gang conspiracy case on Rikers Island. With the city’s main prison complex in the grip of both the coronavirus pandemic and rising violence in May 2020, Mr. Khadu volunteered to transfer to the Vernon C. Bain, where he waited nearly two years for trial that never came.

By the following summer, relatives said, Mr. Khadu spoke of the stifling heat of the boat and the presence of mold and rodents chewing through his food containers. In July 2021, he suffered a seizure. Two months later he had a second attack. He died on the way to the hospital, a few days before his 24th birthday.

The cause of death was later linked to a complication of a rodent-borne viral disease that, if properly treated, is usually not fatal.

His mother, Lezandre Khadu, blames the “disgusting conditions” on the boat.

“How can they expect me to care about these people if they treat them like cargo?” she said. “No human should live in this place.”

The New York State Attorney General investigated Mr. Khadu’s death but said they could not confirm the allegations of improper care. He had been waiting for his trial for almost two years

If the boat runs out, it won’t be the first time. It also closed in the mid-1990s, when Rikers Island’s population began to decline. But unlike the other shuttered floating prisons, the Vernon C. Bain was reopened — initially as a juvenile justice center under Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and later transitioned into a standard adult prison.