Testimony by Amira Wittenberg, MSW Intern
Thank you, Chair Selvena N. Brooks-Powers and Chair Gale A. Brewer, for today’s joint hearing between the New York City Council’s Criminal Justice Committee and the Committee on Governmental Operations, State & Federal Legislation, about voting on the Rikers Island Jail Complex.
My name is Amira Wittenberg. I am currently obtaining my master’s in social work at the Silberman School of Social Work, where I am completing my second-year internship at the Katal Center for Equity, Health, and Justice, based in Brooklyn. Our members are from across the city, and include people who have been incarcerated, family members of currently and formerly incarcerated people, and more. Many of our members know exactly how horrific Rikers is and are deeply troubled by the conditions on Rikers Island.
As a social work student, I have focused my work on issues within the carceral system. In the first year of my master’s program, I interned in the Department of Corrections’ Programs and Community Partnerships division on Rikers Island to provide programs and civic opportunities to incarcerated people. Part of this included working on the initiative to provide people detained at Rikers with access to voter registration materials and absentee ballots, allowing them to vote while incarcerated. This program was deeply understaffed and run by one DOC employee and two MSW interns. We’d also help facilitate bringing a small group of volunteers to Rikers Island to help register people to vote, however due to logistical challenges this would only happen once a month. With this limited capacity, we were only able to select a few units from one of the jails at a time to bring the people in those unit’s voter registration forms. If someone was not in their unit due to a court appointment or another program, they would miss the opportunity to register to vote, and it was not guaranteed they would have this opportunity again. This meant incarcerated people continuously fell through the cracks.
When we visited the units, responses were positive, and people appreciated the opportunities to register and fill out ballots. Typically, this spurned meaningful conversations about civic engagement and the importance of voting. This is particularly important today, as some of our fundamental rights, such as the right to vote, are under attack by the federal government. While the responses from the people we interacted with were positive, we simply could not reach the entire population at Rikers Island, so voting remained largely inaccessible. The program was largely dependent on a small number of people to hand-deliver voting materials to approximately 6,000 people at that time. The population on Rikers Island has only grown, exacerbating this issue, as more than 6,680 people are currently incarcerated in city jails.[i]
Election time proved to be an even bigger challenge, as we needed to meet with and bring absentee ballots to all the people who had registered to vote. This simply was not feasible, and we were not able to reach the entire jail population. Based on my experience, the current absentee ballot program is failing. Most people incarcerated on Rikers do not have the ability to exercise their fundamental right to vote. In 2024, fewer than 8% of the 6,000 incarcerated people at Rikers Island voted, and engagement declined in 2025.[ii] Over 85% of people incarcerated on Rikers Island are incarcerated pretrial and have not been convicted, meaning they are legally innocent and eligible to vote.[iii] However, they are actively being denied that right. The current absentee ballot program does not allow all incarcerated people to have access to vote, infringing on the rights of the people detained at Rikers Island.
We’re here today with the Vote in NYC Jails Coalitions to demand that the Board of Elections address this infringement on the rights of people incarcerated by installing polling sites at Rikers and all New York City jails moving forward. While increasing reporting on voting in jails is important, as proposed in the two bills being heard today, creating poll sites is a vital step toward increasing access and ensuring that incarcerated people can exercise their right to vote.
The city must also take action to address the dangerous conditions at Rikers and pass a budget that fulfills its commitment to shutting down Rikers. Last month, two people died in DOC custody due to medical emergencies, underscoring the crisis unfolding in city jails. For the FY 2027 budget, we urge this council to focus on three things: first, cut the budgets used for caging people – the DOC budget is bloated, wasteful, and must be cut. The city must also reduce the number of people incarcerated at Rikers by increasing investments ATI’s, supervised release, JISH housing, IMT and FACT teams, B-HEARD mental health responses, and more. Second, the closure of Rikers is not just a moral and legal imperative, but given the extraordinary savings that can be realized, it is also a fiscal imperative. The Council must pass a budget that advances efforts to shutter the notorious jail complex. Third, we must increase investments in things that produce real community safety: housing, healthcare, including mental health, education, and jobs. The city must also invest in responses to violence that are survivor-centered, accountability-based, safety-driven, and racially equitable.
We urge this council to both ensure the voting rights of incarcerated people are protected and use its budgetary power to advance the closure of Rikers and hold the mayor accountable to the closure law.
[i] For the data, see Vera Institute for Justice. “New York Criminal Legal System Hub.” March 23, 2025. https://www.vera.org/ny-data-hub/Jail.
[ii] Brigid Bergin. “Most people on Rikers Island are eligible to vote. Thousands don’t get to.” Gothamist. September 19, 2024. https://gothamist.com/news/rikers-island-voting-election-2024
[iii] Michael Rempel. “As of November 2022, more than 84 percent of the people detained on Rikers Island were there pretrial. Decarceration in the Bail Reform Era: New York City’s Changing Jail Population Since 2019.” John Jay College, Data Collaborative for Justice. December 2022. https://datacollaborativeforjustice.org/wpcontent/uploads/2022/12/Decarceration_Reform_Era_NYC7.pdf