GovState professor shares a rare insider look at daily life at Rikers Island

By Sarah Shoaf, Staff Writer

In 2016, Jarrod Shanahan, Criminal Justice professor at Governors State University (GovState), found himself locked up for a short time at Rikers Island following protest activity. This experience at Rikers Island, a New York prison, became a subject of a book he co-authored. 

Noting that his experience differed from the media’s portrayal of violence, extortion, and other acts of human degradation, Dr. Shanahan said he was surprised by what he saw.

“We found ourselves surrounded by the same people we rode the train with, worked with, and lived alongside in New York City,” said Shanahan. “These were ordinary people living existences that were often quite boring, doing nerdy things like talking about comic books and sports, and showing great compassion and generosity toward each other.”

Observations like this are the focus of the book “City Time,” the second in a trilogy on Rikers Island. The book, co-authored by David Campbell and Shanahan, presents a vivid account of Rikers’ social world, from daily life and interpersonal relationships to the class violence and lack of mental health and substance abuse resources.

While Shanahan spent a month at Rikers Island, Campbell spent a year there during the Covid-19 lockdown due to protest activity, despite a high-profile political campaign to set him free. Finding themselves in a negative situation, both looked for a silver lining and decided to turn their circumstances into a chance to study a social world typically unavailable and unknown to the public. 

Assuming the role of researcher and participant in a group or environment of study is rare when it comes to writing on the American prison system.

“Exactly two books of this nature have been written in the past twenty years, “City Time” and Michael Walker's recent “Indefinite,” ‘’ said Shanahan.

Filling this gap in research is important to Shanahan, who emphasizes the secrecy surrounding incarceration and the misconceptions that result when so little is known about the social world locked away.

“You likely know someone who was locked up, or had a family member locked up, and keeps this secret,” he said. “This allows people to believe that incarceration is only something that happens to remarkably bad people, very different from you or I, instead of being a very common experience in the United States that happens to people who are otherwise considered ‘normal.’”

Looking beyond the walls of Rikers, Shanahan will complete the book trilogy with his next co-authored book, “Skyscraper Jails,” where he and co-author, Zhandarka Kurti from Loyola University’s Department of Criminal Justice, present an account of the latest transformation in mass incarceration.

“It [the book] tells the story of how a network of powerful and wealthy non-profit organizations transformed the righteous demand to close Rikers Island into a campaign to construct new skyscraper jails throughout New York City,” said Shanahan about the book releasing in March.

For now, Shanahan is currently on a book tour promoting “City Time” on the east coast with Campbell. Throughout the tour, both authors will be in conversation with various experts in the field, like Donald Washington Jr., Director of Inside Story; Kim Kelly, author of “Fight Like Hell;” and GovState's own Phyllis West, Director of the Social Justice Initiative (SJI).

The tour will wrap with two stops in Illinois, the last being at GovState’s SJI Building on Wednesday, January 22 at 4 p.m. Register for the event here.

For more details on the book and its tour, visit Shanahan’s website.