A jail official on his rounds spotted the ominous signs around 9 p.m. in cell block 7: jagged tiles handy for weapons missing from a bathroom wall and menacing whispering between cells. Then, recalls another official, Deputy Assistant Warden Roy Caldwood: "All hell broke loose."
Last week at New York City's 42-year-old House of Detention for Men on Rikers Island, about 1,500 inmates, who were out on the catwalks for free time, swarmed in every direction, some passing through holes gouged between the asphalt walls of the cell blocks. Prisoners...
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