It’s nearly half past eight on Wednesday evening and approximately 30 men in tan uniforms drift into the common area of a housing unit deep inside the George R Vierno Center, an 850-bed jail and one of eight active facilities on New York’s Rikers Island. Some hover around a folding table piled to the edges with snacks. Others make their way into the smaller rooms on the perimeter of the two-floor communal space and drag plastic chairs closer to the flat-screen televisions mounted inside. The excited chatter and nervous energy bubbles as a familiar refrain cuts through the din.
Knicks in four.
The New York Knicks are moments away from playing in the NBA finals for the first time in 27 years, the last remaining hurdle in their bid to end a title drought that reaches back to 1973. On this balmy June evening, separated by less than 10 miles of water, concrete and razor wire from a Manhattan skyline bathed in orange and blue, the men gathered here are watching the same game that is commanding the attention of millions more in bars, restaurants, living rooms and outdoor gatherings across the five boroughs.
Pictured above: An exterior view of the Rikers Island jail complex on 3 June 2026. Pictured below: The bridge connecting Rikers Island to Queens crosses a sprawling employee parking lot before reaching the jail complex, which houses the vast majority of people held in New York City’s custody. All photographs by Lauren Caulk.
For a few hours, one of America’s most notorious jail complexes and least visible institutions is tapping into a civic ritual that has brought New Yorkers together like few public events in decades. The underdog Knicks’ long-awaited return to basketball’s biggest stage has given people in custody at Rikers a rare opportunity to participate in a shared New York moment that will see them arguing over the same calls, second-guessing the same decisions and dreaming the same dream that is consuming the city outside.
“You don’t have a team full of superstar players in the Knicks,” says Luis Guzman, a 43-year-old from the Pelham Parkway section of the Bronx who has been held at Rikers since September on a burglary case that remains pending. “It’s the chemistry and the teamwork that makes them great. This is the year they finally might get it done. If we take one in San Antonio, it’s over for San Antonio. We will not lose at home. All we got to do is take one down here.”
Guzman has taken a front-row seat for Wednesday’s game inside the Beacon Center, a common area that includes classrooms, a recording studio, a barbershop and other workforce-training programs. He is part of what correction officials describe as an “honors house”, a housing unit reserved for incarcerated people who have gone at least 120 days without violence or disciplinary incidents and have demonstrated a sustained commitment to programming and rehabilitation, qualifying them to receive snacks and to remain out past the normal 9pm lock-in. Many of the men here to watch the game have gone six months or longer without an infraction.
Pictured above: A group of men in the common area of a housing unit in the George R Vierno Center watch as the Knicks play their first NBA finals game since 1999. Pictured below: Most of Wednesday’s attendees have gone six months or longer without an infraction, qualifying them to receive snacks and to remain out past the normal 9pm lock-in.
The Guardian was granted access to Rikers Island by the New York City department of correction and was accompanied during its visit by the agency’s deputy commissioner for public information.
The reward for good behavior on Wednesday night looks more like a Super Bowl spread than standard jailhouse fare: bags of chips and cookies, platters of fruit and cheese, bottled soft drinks and a large sheet cake frosted with three words that, for a night at least, unite nearly everyone in attendance: Let’s Go Knicks! Some of the items are similar to what people in custody could buy through commissary, though one DOC staffer notes that the name brands represent an upgrade from what’s offered during a typical movie night. A tinsel curtain frames the entrance while the remnants of an unfinished balloon arch lie scattered across the sealed concrete floor.
The Game 1 watch parties on Rikers extend far beyond this one. Correction officials say incarcerated people in roughly 44 housing units across the complex are taking part in some form of gathering for the game, reaching almost 2,000 people in all. Some facilities host viewings in dedicated program spaces like the Peace Center in the basement of the Robert N Davoren Complex, a similar hub for incarcerated males aged 21 and under. Over in the Otis Bantum Correctional Center, another male detention unit located a half mile down the road, people are watching in a chapel.
Pictured above: A large sheet cake frosted with three words that, for one night at least, unite nearly everyone in the room. Pictured below: Remnants of an unfinished balloon arch lay scattered across the floor of the Beacon Center, which stands for Building Education, Advancing and Creating Opportunities for Networking.
There are roughly 6,000 people in custody on Rikers Island, a 413-acre patch of land in the East River tucked between Queens and the Bronx just north of LaGuardia Airport. Most have not been convicted of a crime and are awaiting trial, while some are serving shorter sentences. For generations, the name Rikers has been shorthand for New York City’s vast and troubled jail system, a collection of aging facilities that has been ordered to be closed and replaced by four jails across the city by August 2027, though it is unlikely to meet that deadline.
But on Wednesday night, for roughly a third of the people incarcerated here, basketball briefly collapses the distance between the island and the city beyond the bridge.
***
‘This is what the Knicks do!’
The snappy conversation ricochets around the room during the tense opening quarter, sounding much like it would in a Bronx barbershop, a Queens bodega or a crowded Staten Island living room. The hollers ring out from the doorways in Beacon Center with mounting intensity as the Knicks sprint out to a 14-7 lead, but the mood shifts when they abruptly fall behind 27-17 and the broadcast cuts away to star playmaker Jalen Brunson limping off the floor and into the locker room with an injury.
“This is what the Knicks do!” groans John Shakespeare, a 44-year-old from Brooklyn who has been detained here since February while awaiting trial. “This game is over. This is why I roll with the Liberty. I like the little elephant they got.”
“They actually brought a trophy home,” Guzman says of New York’s WNBA team.
Most New Yorkers know Rikers only as a forbidding silhouette in the East River, a cluster of low-slung buildings visible from highways on the drive into LaGuardia but largely disconnected from daily life. In reality, it functions almost as a self-contained municipality, with its own power plant, industrial kitchen that produces roughly 7m meals annually and other infrastructure needed to sustain thousands of people every day.
Nearly everybody in the Beacon Center watch party is a lifelong Knicks fan hanging on every possession. Not Richard Weems, a 44-year-old Harlem native who has been held here since October while awaiting court proceedings. He took a liking to the Spurs back in the 1990s because of Tim Duncan and quietly observes the game from the front row with a stoic intensity similar to the longtime San Antonio star, acknowledging every Victor Wembanyama highlight with a subtle fist pump and a knowing nod.
Thomas Gregory, 59, arrived at Rikers on a charge of attempted criminal possession of a weapon nearly 15 months ago and is still waiting for his case to move forward. A longtime Knicks supporter going back the Walt Frazier days, he says he was supposed to go to trial in December but has instead watched hearing after hearing come and go. With another court date looming next week, he speaks about his future with a mix of frustration and resignation.
“They keep putting it off, putting it off,” says Gregory, who spends his typical Wednesday nights in the housing unit playing chess or dominoes. “I feel like they’re not going to do nothing.”
But Gregory snaps right back into the action when a San Antonio player appears to get away with traveling during a chaotic possession: “He’s taking the A train! How many steps is he gonna take?”
Pictured above: The George R Vierno Center, opened in 1991 as an 850-bed facility for detainees, is one of eight active facilities on Rikers Island.
Sport may seem like a frivolity in a jail long criticized for violence, neglect, dysfunction, corruption and inhumane conditions. The average detainee remains at Rikers for nearly four months, roughly four times the national average. Four people have died in custody so far this year, including two in a 24-hour span last month, after more than a dozen deaths in 2025, nearly all from medical problems. An independent commission once described the jail as “a crumbling, inordinately expensive incubator of misery”, which qualifies as a understatement in the broader context of its bleak history. Though city leaders intend to replace Rikers with four smaller borough-based jails under a City Council mandate, the current administration has admitted the scheduled 2027 closure date is “practically impossible to fulfill”.
But for now those grim realities fade into the background and the conversation belongs to basketball.
The repartee during commercial breaks strays far beyond the game. An advertisement for the new iPhone sparks a debate over the merits of smartphones v dumbphones and the shredded attention spans of today’s youth. A trailer for Disclosure Day prompts an animated discussion of Steven Spielberg’s body of work. A mention of the reports that Donald Trump will be attending Game 3 at Madison Square Garden is met with a mixture of laughter and groans.
“Oh, now he wants to come?” Shakespeare says. “Now he’s from here?”
The banter comes quick and fast and everybody is fair game. When Mikal Bridges buries a mid-range jumper to put the Knicks ahead 40-39, the television cameras find celebrity superfan Timothée Chalamet celebrating from near courtside.
Guzman shakes his head.
“You see that guy?” he says, pointing at the screen. “He’s cheering now, but watch when they go down. He stays quiet.”
***
‘We’re not the judge or jury’
Few people in the room understand the weight of these moments better than Stanley Richards, who in January was tapped by New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani to become the first formerly incarcerated person to oversee the city’s jails. Three decades earlier, Richards spent time in a 10-by-7-foot cell on Rikers following a robbery conviction. He has gone on to build a career helping others navigate re-entry before returning to the system as a reform-minded leader.
Richards says events such as the Knicks watch party are designed to remind people in custody that they remain connected to the city beyond the jail’s walls.
“Nights like this communicate to the people in our care that we’re not the judge or jury,” Richards tells the Guardian at half-time with the Spurs nursing a seven-point lead. “We don’t determine who comes in or when people go out, but we can determine how we treat people when they come into our care.”
Pictured above: Stanley Richards was appointed commissioner of the New York City’s department of correction in February, becoming the first formerly incarcerated person to oversee the city’s jails. Pictured below: Richards takes in the second half of Game 1 at the George R Vierno Center.
His appointment comes at a pivotal moment for Rikers. The jail complex has been under federal oversight for a decade, while last year a federal judge ordered the appointment of an independent remediation manager with sweeping powers after finding the city had failed to make sufficient progress in curbing violence and improving conditions.
The unusual arrangement means Richards must lead the nation’s second-largest jail system while sharing authority with a court-appointed third party, known as a federal receiver, charged with accelerating reforms. At the same time, he is helping steer New York City’s long-delayed effort to close Rikers altogether and replace it piecemeal. That has included the April opening of a jail unit within the city’s Bellevue hospital that will house more than 100 people with acute medical conditions and serious mental illness who are currently held at Rikers.
Standing inside one of the viewing rooms in the Beacon Center as correction officers hand out cake and drinks during the third quarter, Richards says those small acts matter more than people realize.
“Part of our job is to see the best in people before they can see it in themselves,” Richards says. “We hold that image of who they can be until they begin to believe it too. That means not judging someone by the worst thing they’ve ever done. It means refusing to give people a scarlet letter for life. It means treating people the way we’d want our own family members treated.”
***
‘The whole of New York is stressed right now’
Even as San Antonio stretch their lead to 14 midway through the third quarter and a collective anxiety begins to creep in, the noise level in the unit barely dips. But as Richards watches the game from alongside the men of the George R Vierno Center while giving his running commentary, the Knicks storm back with a 22-9 run to close the period and send the game into the fourth tied at 76 apiece.
With every New York basket from there, a full throttle of sound reverberates through the cinder-block walls from all directions as “Let’s go Knicks!” chants ring through the corridors. Gleeful correction officers and staffers move in and out of the different viewing rooms with pace, pumping their fists and hollering as if they were in the Garden itself.
The tension only climbs in the fourth quarter as the Spurs rattle off eight unanswered points during a four-minute stretch where the suddenly frigid Knicks miss seven shots in a row, lifting San Antonio to a 95-94 lead with just over two minutes to go.
“This is stressing me out right now,” Guzman says. “The whole of New York is stressed out right now.”
Pictured above: An interior view of the George R Vierno Center. Pictured below: The bridge to Rikers Island is less than a mile long, but for many New Yorkers it marks a far greater divide between life inside the city’s jail system and the world beyond.
That’s when Brunson, the Knicks’ undersized talisman, deposits a corner three that puts New York ahead once and for all, detonating celebrations throughout the unit. The home team closes the game on a decisive 11-0 run, the roars growing in volume as the margin widens, setting off scenes of pure elation throughout Beacon Center and sending nearly all of the crowd off to lock-up with spirits high. Final score: Knicks 105, Spurs 95. One down, three to go.
“Last time I watched the Knicks in the finals I was a senior in high school,” Guzman says. “It was back in 1999 when they lost to the Spurs, the year after Michael Jordan retired. I grew up on 149 and Third Avenue in the Bronx, but I ended up moving out to a better neighborhood. Third Avenue is like a third-world country nowadays. But I love the Bronx and I love our city.”
