Lockdown on Rikers (3 page)

As we came off the bridge and onto the island, lines of exiting cars, trunks popped open, awaited inspection before crossing back to Queens. Correction officers in yellow rain slickers were crouched next to the cars, extending long poles with attached mirrors underneath each one, checking for an inmate desperate enough to cling to the undercarriage of a car to make it across the bridge—a grim reminder that this was no industrial plant.

We parked in a stadium-sized lot and walked to Control, a cavernous administrative building that visitors and workers must pass through before proceeding to the jail. Out in front, it was a chaotic scene as a city bus screeched to the curb and throngs of visitors exited, mostly dark-skinned women and frightened-looking children. One woman with a long braid looked up at me as she unfolded a flimsy stroller. With my pale skin and student backpack, I felt a little self-conscious. But she gave me a little smile, and I waved back. During our orientations, we had learned that Rikers is a jails complex. Unlike prisons, which house those convicted of crimes, jails house “detainees,” those who may well be innocent of their charges but cannot afford bail as they await trial. Since money is the sole factor in determining whether or not bail is attainable, by default Rikers houses the poor. In most cases, the bail amount is less than $1,000. Most of these women's loved ones—primarily young Black and Hispanic males from New York City's most impoverished neighborhoods—couldn't scrape together even that.

The inside of Control was nothing more than a scattering of graffiti-scarred benches, a cement floor, and a few birds swooping through the rafters. Along the walls, ominous signs warned against cameras, recording devices, drugs, weapons, and other contraband with the threat of arrest for any violation. The idea that someone could be arrested while inside a jail complex struck me as a little funny, but no one here was amused. Long lines of tired visitors holding whimpering babies and lawyers in pinstriped suits waited
at clerical windows for the necessary security passes. The four of us proceeded to rear turnstiles, where stone-faced COs once again compared our ID photos to our faces. With their grudging nods, we headed out to a bus depot and climbed aboard an orange-and-blue school bus bound for our destination, the Rose M. Singer Center.

The bus churned down the main roadway, and we pressed our faces to the windows for our first close-up view of this stark “campus.” Large brick buildings with strange little slits for windows were situated haphazardly. Some were tucked back amid groves of trees; others sat closer to the road, with long armlike annexes reaching out to the curb. Smaller roadways fanned out from the main artery, accessing jails that were out of view. Each of these jails was governed by its own warden who oversaw a staff of deputy wardens (deps), captains, and a battalion of correction officers. The original House of Detention for Men stood prominently along the curb. A throwback to another era, the dark-brick HDM featured a cement stoop and a little yellow light over the front entrance.

Around a bend, Department of Correction buses were parked inside maintenance garages. As we pressed on, the scent of leavening bread from the island's bakery filled the damp, heavy air. An efficient world unto itself, the island was also strangely quiet, not an inmate in sight. We'd been told that recreation yards are contained within the interiors of the jails, meaning that inmates are never seen on the grounds. And since walking anywhere on the island was strictly forbidden for correctional personnel and civilians alike, the winding sidewalks and grassy lawns were eerily empty, save for flocks of grazing geese.

At an intersection, we waited while a parade of buses, their windows covered in steel mesh, lumbered up from smaller lanes, headed for the bridge. As the caravan swung around the corner, I could just make out the silhouettes of male inmates. Each day, a staggering one thousand detainees are shuttled to city courts for hearings and trials. However, despite high hopes of beating their charges and going home, for most this bleak island is simply the first stop on the way to an upstate prison. Alongside the jails, commercial buses
were parked in wait. As cases are resolved, these coach buses travel up the New York State Thruway, delivering the newly convicted to Downstate Correctional Facility in Fishkill, New York, a massive processing center. From there, they are farmed out to one of seventy prisons, where they will serve sentences ranging anywhere from a couple of years to life. And in capital cases, there were those on this island who potentially faced death row.

After the bus traffic cleared, we turned down a tree-lined road that paralleled the river. Through the leaves of the old oaks and maples, the water rippled. Across the way, the Queens shoreline looked small and distant.

The bus ground to a halt in front of a hulking rectangular building, the American flag fluttering high above. “Rose Singer!” shouted the driver. At the jail's entryway, a female CO with fluorescent orange fingernails unlocked the door, checked our IDs, and admitted us into a bare-bones lobby furnished with a magnetometer and a small security desk. The yellow cinder-block walls were dominated by a framed portrait of Rose Singer, the jail's namesake. With a wry smile and upswept gray hair, Rose Singer was a lifelong advocate for incarcerated women. At the jail's dedication in 1988, she was quoted as saying that she hoped this facility would serve as “a place of hope and renewal for all the women who come here.” Although a curious sentiment for a jail, as I gazed up at her picture, I thought I would have liked Rose Singer, and took her wish as a good omen for my year ahead.

2

At the entryway gate, our supervisors were wait
ing. They helped us negotiate the main security booth, and when the big gate inched open, they led us into the Rose Singer halls, where looming cinder-block corridors reeked of pine-scented disinfectant. Barred gates were swung open, and navy blue–uniformed officers milled about, smoking cigarettes and chatting. There were no inmates in sight. Janet Waters, my superviser, explained that it was “count time,” one of several daily periods when inmates are confined to their houses to be tallied up to ensure there hadn't been an escape.

Our destination was the clinic, and as we proceeded through the halls, the officers stiffened at the sight of four unfamiliar faces, their eyes latching onto our photo IDs. Allison clutched her pocketbook tightly, Wendy rolled her eyes, and Maureen made a soft clucking noise. A light shiver ran down my back. This was not the Charles Street Jail.

We stopped at a wide double doorway. Next to the entrance was a plain hinged door. Janet rapped on this smaller door, and it was snatched open by a stocky CO, big key ring at his waist. “Officer Overton!” Janet beamed. “Say hello to the new students—they'll be with us for the next year.”

But Officer Overton simply glared at us. “Baahhh” was about all he managed before returning to a corner desk where he kept watch over the Mental Health section of the clinic.

Janet rolled her eyes. “Don't worry, you'll get used to him.”

The clinic's perimeter was lined with small offices for the staff—psychiatrists, psychologists, and therapists of master's degree level in either social work or psychology. Toward the rear was a makeshift conference room. With a rickety wooden table and a buzzing overhead light, this was the assigned space for the students, home base for the year. About the only point of interest were three small mesh-covered windows that ran the length of the outer wall. We threw our bags down and stood up on tiptoe to peer out. But other than a pile of broken cement and a chain-link fence, there was little to see, not even a tiny glimpse of the river. Allison slumped into a tan folding chair, pulled a calendar from her backpack and crossed off our first day, though it had barely begun. “One day down!”

“Oh, girls,” Maureen smiled. “It's just going to take a little getting used to.”

“Oh, ho!” said Wendy. “There's
a lot
we're going to have to get used to.”

After settling in, we split up to meet with our supervisors. As I took a seat in Janet's office—a cramped cinder-block square she shared with a colleague—it occurred to me that jail affords no extra comforts to its civilian workers. But Janet didn't seem to mind. Seated behind a battered metal desk in a smart burgundy suit, she looked as graceful and assured as I'd remembered her back at school. As she poured us some tea, she filled me in. “There's over a thousand women in this jail, Mary—twelve hundred, to be exact—and the Mental Health Department is kept
verrry
busy. These women, they've been pulled away from home, family, children, and a lot of them are coming off drugs. They're in a bad way, and it's our job to get them stabilized, especially to prevent suicides—always a concern in here. We don't get involved in their legal cases; we work independently of the courts. Our mission is to treat these women for however long they're here on Rikers.”

“You mean, until they go to trial?” I asked.

“Well . . . until they leave. Very few go to trial, Mary. It's not like TV. They usually accept a plea bargain offer, and then it's off to Bedford Hills Prison.”

“Oh,” I said, absorbing this surprising bit of information.

“But for however long they're here—weeks, months, or even years—we try to give them the best treatment possible. Most of them have had pretty crummy lives, you'll see.”

“Are we talking rehabilitation?” I asked.

“Not exactly. More like stabilizing. We try to stabilize them with medication and therapy to get them out of acute crisis. But that's not to say you won't be doing in-depth work with some of them. It's just a question of how long they're here on Rikers.”

As we sipped tea and chatted, a growing din in the corridors was turning into a roar. Janet glanced at her watch. “Count just cleared—they're coming out of their houses now. Off to work, mess hall, the clinic. Let's get started,” she smiled. “I'd like to show you the receiving room—it's where the newly arrested are processed, issued IDs, given medical screenings, and assigned beds. There's someone I need to check on. If she needs follow-up, I'll assign the case to you. After that, we'll visit the Mental Observation Unit—it's where we house the suicidal and mentally ill. And while we're there,” she said, “I have another case in mind for you.”

As Officer Overton unlocked the clinic door, I was so taken with the idea of my own cases that I barely realized we were stepping into halls that were now crowded with inmates. Janet melded easily into a noisy throng that would have reminded me of a high school corridor between classes if not for the officers who stood watch—both male and female. I stuck close to her as we walked alongside women who bore the markings of hard lives—toothless smiles, ripped ear lobes, and jagged scars across their cheeks. The women were mostly young, and all were Black or Hispanic. The attire was jeans, sneakers, and sweats—permissible because they were detainees and therefore presumed innocent. But clipped to each woman's shirt was also a big photo ID with a ten-digit case number beneath the photo.

The crowd seemed unfazed by our presence, although someone recognized Janet. “Hello, Miss Waters!” Janet's response was friendly but restrained.

On the outer edges of the crowd, I noticed emaciated women with ghostlike stares shuffling along in baggy, billowing clothes. Janet leaned down and whispered, “Crack addicts—just arrested. Couple of months in here, off drugs, they'll come back to life, you watch.”

I tried not to stare at these eerie figures, but I wondered about Janet's assertion that they would “come back to life” in here. Could they have done so on their own? Maybe jail wasn't such a bad thing for them. Maybe it was just the intervention they needed. I hoped I could be a part of it.

But it wasn't exactly a pleasant intervention. Although street clothes were permitted, hats were not allowed outside the housing areas, and somewhere in the sea of women, a red kerchief was bobbing along. An officer reached out a tattooed arm and snatched it off the head of a startled young woman. “What the fuck you doing?” he roared. “Not in
my jail,
you don't!”

Janet sighed but said nothing, and we continued on, our progress slowed by barred gates that were now shut. At each one, we held up our ID badges to officers who opened them and just as quickly locked them up again. There was no easy movement through the jail, as passageways were sectioned off from one gate to the next.

As we neared the jail's entryway, Janet nodded to the CO who stood guard over the receiving room. As he fussed with keys, I could already hear the clamor on the other side. “Brace yourself,” Janet said. The door swung open to reveal cages—floor-to-ceiling bullpens where mobs of disheveled women were pressed in tightly. With arms flailing through the bars, they sobbed and cried out,
“I'm hungry. I need to call my mother. I didn't do anything! I'm cold. Help me!”
Their pleas were directed at officers, seated behind a large console, who never looked up.

The sight of human beings in cages caught me off guard. It felt utterly barbaric, and my knees began to wobble. I glanced at Janet, who seemed unperturbed. Yet I knew she cared. Somehow, Janet managed to go about her work, holding herself above the sad fray. I
didn't know how she did it, but if I was really going to do this work, I had to toughen up.

Behind the console was an open rear door. The skies had cleared, a blue sky now beckoned, and a bus sat idling. A line of seven women, each one handcuffed to a single long chain, were being led off the bus. Some wore sneakers, others flip-flops, whatever they'd been wearing at the unexpected point of arrest. With eyes swollen from crying, they looked exhausted and defeated.

“Incoming bodies!” a CO shouted. His colleague eyed the arriving line and shook his head. “Too many goddamned bodies—not enough beds!”

Bodies?

I followed Janet to a nurses' booth where cursory mental health screenings were part of the intake process. A nurse handed Janet a chart. “Her name's Tiffany Glover. First time in, doesn't look good—thought you should have a look.”

Off to the side, a single holding pen held the inmate in question. A CO unlocked it and told Tiffany Glover to step out. No older than twenty, with her hair pulled into a ponytail, she reminded me of a deer, her long skinny legs set off by a pair of bony knees. Wearing a T-shirt over her emaciated frame, Tiffany Glover resembled the stick figures in the halls—the crack addicts.

Janet told Tiffany who we were and asked her how she was feeling. But the sad young woman simply stared at the floor.

“We're going to help you,” Janet said, eyeing the pink scars that crisscrossed the young woman's forearms.

“I wanna go home,” she whispered. “I'm not a criminal.”

“Tiffany,” said Janet. “I understand this is your first time in jail. Are you having any thoughts of hurting yourself?”

“I wanna go home.”

Although it was a safe bet that everyone wanted to go home, with her slumped shoulders, no eye contact, and a propensity for cutting herself, I could see why the drooping Tiffany Glover was a particular concern.

“Tiffany,” said Janet, “we're going to help you while you're in here. We're going to transfer you to a special house, and Miss Buser here is going to work with you. We'll give you some medicine so you won't feel so depressed. We're going to help you get through this, okay?”

I tried to offer Tiffany a little smile, but she never looked up. Large teardrops were rolling down her cheeks. Other than being told she could get back on the bus and leave, I don't think anything would have comforted Tiffany Glover in that moment.

From the thick folder that Janet carried with her, she pulled out a transfer form and showed me how to fill it out. She handed it to the officers at the console, instructing them to house Tiffany Glover on the Mental Observation Unit.

As Tiffany was ushered back into the pen, Janet cautioned me about the heightened suicide risk for first incarcerations. “She'll come around, but right now I'd rather play it safe.”

As we walked past the pens to leave, a sobbing older woman in a floral housecoat was waving to us frantically. In broken English, she tearfully cried, “
Por favor! Ay dios mio!
I live my sister and my sister son, I take care him—I go get milk before sister go work—she clean office at night, in city—I go corner,” she said, her voice starting to break, “
policía, policía
come—they put to wall. Me, me no have drug. I tell
policía
, I buy
leche
, but he say me, ‘Shut fuck up!' I get milk,” she said pointing to her feet, to the fuzzy blue slippers she was wearing when she ran out for the milk. “My sister, she no phone—she know . . . where I go!
Ay dios mio!
”

“Looks like she was picked up in a drug sweep,” Janet said. “Okay, hold on,” Janet told her, as she opened up her notebook.

I knew of the infamous drug sweeps that are carried out regularly in the city's poorer neighborhoods as part of the federal “War on Drugs.” These sweeps cast a wide net, and it's not unusual for the innocent to be swept up with the guilty. While this woman may have been mixed up with drugs, she could just as easily have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and, if so, the idea that she could have been plucked off the street like this was frightening.

Janet jotted down her name. “I'll have someone from Social Services call you,” she told the woman. “They'll help you write a letter to your sister, so she knows where you are.”

“The least we can do,” Janet muttered. “I'm sure she's got no money for bail, so she'll sit here for a few months while her case gets sorted out.”

A few months! Her sister would find out where she was through a letter!
It seemed inconceivably primitive, but there was Janet, jotting it all down.

“Gracias, gracias!”
the woman said, wringing her hands together.

I doubt she understood what Janet was saying, but she seemed grateful for this little bit of attention.

While we waited at the exit door, the bar-banging and shouting had grown deafening, and one CO was no longer ignoring it. A short officer with bulging biceps charged out from behind the console and shouted,
“Shut up! Shut up, motherfuckers! Shut the fuck UPPP!”

The receiving room went stone silent, save for quiet sobbing and the idling bus.

“Come on, Mary, let's go,” Janet said. She didn't have to ask twice.

Out in the hall, I said to Janet, “How could he speak to those women like that?”

Janet sighed. “I'm afraid you're going to see a lot in here that'll be upsetting. Some COs are a lot worse than him. But we're not going to change their behavior, Mary. We walk a fine line in here—remember, this is their house, and we're guests. If we're going to do our work in here—and we do a lot of good for these inmates—then there are things we have to overlook. We're going to help Tiffany Glover, and that's what we need to stay focused on.”

I saw her point. I would try to keep my eye on the bigger picture.

“Now,” Janet said, “Our next stop is the Mental Observation Unit. Ever since the state started shutting down the big psych hospitals, the mentally ill just can't cut it on their own. They get in trouble
with the police, usually for petty, stupid things, and they wind up in here. To take care of them, most of the jails on the island have a Mental Observation Unit, or ‘MO' as we call it. It's where each jail houses its mentally ill inmates, those with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, dementia. It's also where we place inmates at risk for suicide.”