Rikers Island has gotten so dangerous that some inmates are accepting unfavorable plea deals just to get out — even if it means they land at notorious prisons such as Sing Sing or Attica, sources told The Post.
“Rikers Island is the most wretched place on God’s Earth,” said Altura St. Michael Ewers, who in 2014 spent a year at the jail — where a brutal attack by a fellow inmate left him blind in one eye, with seizures and an inability to control his bowels.
Ewers, 46, had been facing up to four years behind bars for alleged grand larceny and money laundering as part of a pal’s scheme.
He initially planned to take his chances at trial, but a year later, agreed to a plea deal.
“He had a great defense,’’ insisted his lawyer, Carmen Giordano. “He was a third-party investor who provided capital and received due returns — he committed no crime and was not aware of any wrongdoing.’’
Still, the white-collar criminal agreed to serve time in an upstate prison because he feared for his life, according to a federal lawsuit he filed over his injuries.
“I’d much rather suffer than do something against what I thought was right, but there just came a point when they broke me,” Ewers said.
Ewers acknowledged that he “was scared’’ about which prison he would be sent to.
He ended up at the medium-security Woodbourne Correctional Facility in Sullivan County, where he served less than a year behind bars.
“Woodbourne, it felt like a Buddhist retreat” compared to Rikers, Ewers said. “I didn’t see one fight the whole time I was there.”
Seasoned criminal defense lawyer Andrew Plasse remarked, “Everyone would rather go upstate” than stay in Rikers because the jail has a “revolving door” of criminals, keeping inmates on edge.
Martin Horn, former commissioner of the Department of Correction under then-Mayor Mike Bloomberg, said Rikers has gotten more dangerous even though the city’s prison population has declined — from 22,000 inmates in 1995 to roughly 10,000 — because “what’s left are the hardest-core prisoners.”
The city insists that violence is down overall in its jails, including an 11 percent drop in assaults on staff and an 8 percent dip in inmates injured in fights.
DOC spokesman Peter Thorne said, “Safety is Commissioner [Joseph] Ponte’s top priority, and his reforms to create a culture of safety are working.”
But guards say the feeling inside bucks the statistics.
“I’ve been on the job for 17 years, and, in my 17 years, this is the worst environment that I have seen so far,” a Rikers correction officer told The Post.