On September 19, Isaabdul Karim became the eleventh person this year to die in custody at the notoriously abusive Rikers Island in New York City. Three days later, Stephan Khadu died at the Vernon C. Bain Correctional Center, a floating jail barge docked off of Rikers Island.

Karim was held in an intake cell for ten days and went weeks without medical care. His partner, Felice Bullock, told the New York Times that Karim had complained on the phone: “They’re not feeding us. I don’t know what’s going on. They are treating us like animals; worse than animals.”

On the day of his death, Karim was days, perhaps hours, from qualifying for a release under the new Less Is More legislation, which was introduced in 2018 by socialist state assemblymember Phara Souffrant Forrest and signed into law on September 17, 2021, by New York governor Kathy Hochul. The legislation restricts incarceration for noncriminal technical violations.