In the spring of 1995, Janet alerted me to an opening in her new jail. “This is it, Mary Mac. You ready?”
Although this was the moment I’d been waiting for, now I wasn’t so sure. I hadn’t expected to be working with men, who were likely charged with more serious crimes.
“It doesn’t matter what they’re charged with,” Janet said. “It’s the exact same work. Believe me, you’d adjust easily. Besides, we have a first-rate team here, a lot of support. You’d learn a lot, and you’d fit in very well.”
Sometimes we have to take things on faith. Regardless of whether it was men or women, I sensed that the time had come. I told Janet I’d see her soon.
15
On a sunny June morning, I drove across the Rikers Island bridge, no longer a student but a neophyte professional. Although several years had passed since I’d left Rose Singer, things still felt familiar—the seagulls, the roaring jets, the barbed-wire compound unfolding as you got closer. Not only did it feel familiar, it felt right. By now, my family and friends had more or less accepted that this was what I wanted. But even better, I had met someone special who was solidly behind me. Alex was a psychiatrist whom I’d met through one of my jobs. Originally from Ecuador, he had a limited license to practice medicine in New York State. Although fully licensed in his native country, he was studying to pass stringent exams in order to become fully licensed in the United States. As I encouraged him in his studies, he supported me in my unusual aspiration to work with the incarcerated, even helping me to find a reliable secondhand car. The night before my return, we’d gone out to dinner to celebrate.
But now, as I shifted gears in my little car, I felt tension in the briny air. Frenzied black sedans with flashing blue lights whipped back and forth across the bridge. And along the riverbank, a beefed-up fleet of security jeeps patrolled the island’s edges. Most ominous of all were two gray tanks creeping down the main roadway, ready to squash any uprising. In the time I’d been gone, there’d been a surge in the inmate population, and the island was on high alert. The city had a new mayor, Rudolph Giuliani, whose trademark was an emphasis on crime reduction. Suddenly, even minor transgressions such as trespassing and jumping turnstiles at the subway were being aggressively policed, resulting in unprecedented numbers of arrests. The jails were now packed to capacity, with barges ferried in to house the overflow. On this 415-acre island, a record 24,000 detainees awaited their fate. Considering that entire prisons typically house about 2,000 inmates in total, the numbers here were staggering.
At the bus depot, I boarded a different bus than the one I’d taken to Rose Singer. As it rumbled down the road, we passed a dump truck, its bed filled with male inmates in olive drab uniforms on some sort of work detail. Unlike the detainees, who were the mainstay of the Rikers population, these were actual prisoners, those who’d been sentenced to a year or less and were permitted to serve it on Rikers itself. The jail they resided in was technically a prison. With cases behind them, and sentences of less than a year, they were often referred to as the “lucky ones.”
The bus made a quick unfamiliar turn and pulled up in front of an imposing, boxlike building, the George Motchan Detention Center, my new workplace. One of Rikers Island’s largest jails, GMDC housed 2,200 men. A bronze plaque commemorated the jail’s namesake, George Motchan, an officer killed trying to thwart an inmate escape from a city hospital.
The lobby was crowded with correction officers and civilian workers in the midst of a shift change. Framed photographs lined the walls: photos of a smiling Mayor Giuliani, of the correction commissioner, and of George Motchan. Although I saw nothing comparable to the Rose Singer portrait, just above the entryway bars someone had scrolled the famous Dostoevsky quote: “A society can be judged by the condition of its jails.” I wondered what life at GMDC would say about us.
After navigating security windows and magnetometers, I waited as the entryway gate inched open. A throng of navy blue–uniformed officers spilled out, and behind them was Janet, waving to me. Though her hair was longer, she still wore her trademark suit and in every other way remained her stately self. “Hey there, you,” she said, giving me a big hug. “Finally!”
Beside Janet was a short, pretty woman in her mid-forties, whom I recognized from my interviews as GMDC’s Mental Health chief, Pat Ballard. “We’re glad you’re here!” the chief smiled, shaking my hand. “We’re so glad you decided to come on board!”
“Come on,” said Janet, “everyone’s waiting to meet you.” We hustled back through the open gate and past an inner security window. But once inside the jail, we stopped short and stood back along the wall. Officers in riot gear were streaming down the hall, shedding helmets, face shields, and chest padding. “They’re returning from a housing search,” Janet whispered. “They look for weapons.” Two big German shepherds, held in check by an officer in a DOC baseball cap, were wending through the commotion. “Part of the K-9 unit,” Pat said. “They take dogs into the houses to sniff out drugs. Believe it or not, Mary, there’s plenty of drugs right here in the jail.”
I’d seen neither search teams nor dogs at Rose Singer, and I knew in that moment that working in a men’s jail was going to be very different. But with the escalating inmate population, I also knew life behind bars was simply becoming more violent, for men and women alike. A 1994 cover of New York magazine asked, “Is Rikers About to Explode?” Mayor Giuliani boldly brushed it off while quietly mandating that order be maintained; I assumed these search teams were part of that effort.
When the coast was clear, we crossed over to a stairwell and ambled up to the second floor. Halfway down the corridor was a set of double doors. “Home base!” said Pat.
Inside were office cubicles, bulletin boards, and a small conference room where coffee and bagels had been set out. Charley Simms, the assistant chief, a tall strapping man with a big toothy smile, was rounding up the troops. “Come on, everyone—let’s welcome Mary!”
We all sat around the table, and Pat introduced me to the crew: Robert Goodwin and Victor Alfaro, two psychiatrists; Richard Delgado, a psychologist; and therapists Ellie, Chuck, Frederick, and Connie. Later, I would meet the evening staff.
“So, Mary,” said Dr. Delgado, a twinkle in his eye, “you ready for the big leagues?” A squat, fiftyish man with salt-and-pepper hair, Delgado was the unit’s clinical supervisor.
“Of course she’s ready,” said Janet, with feigned indignation.
“After all,” he winked, “I heard that Rose Singer’s like working in Mickey Mouse land.”
“Oh, go on!” Janet laughed.
“Well,” said Charley, “with nine men’s jails to one women’s house, you can see who the real criminals are—although you’ll find the men are quieter.”
“But then again,” said Ellie, “the men will quietly cut your throat.”
“Whoops! She’s going to quit before lunch!” joked Dr. Goodwin. The psychiatrist, speaking in a soft Haitian accent, wasn’t going to miss out on the fun.
“No, she’s not,” Janet asserted. “Mary knows that for these inmates, we’re the good guys. They know we’re trying to help them. The violence in here is pretty much inmate on inmate.”
“Sad, but true,” said Pat.
As we chatted, I felt immediately at home with my new colleagues and fortunate to be joining this highly regarded team. With a combined total of close to twenty years on Rikers, Pat and Charley had an island-wide reputation for strong, competent leadership. And based on what I was learning, their leadership, and the support of this team, would come in very handy in the days ahead.
“Count just cleared!” somebody yelled. Out in the corridor, a rush of noise and activity interrupted our little gathering, and the crew scrambled up from the table, tossing Styrofoam cups into trash pails. Armed with piles of charts, they headed down to the clinic to meet with the morning’s patients.
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When all was quiet, Pat showed me around, pointing out a bulletin board that listed GMDC’s mentally ill inmates—one hundred in total—who were housed on not one but two MOs. We leafed through various logbooks, and she showed me the all-important basket of referral slips. Just as at Rose Singer, the basket was overflowing. “Tomorrow,” she said, “you’ll start evaluating some of these—anybody who needs follow-up will go onto your caseload.”
While Pat took a phone call, I flipped through the pile of referrals and swallowed hard. The referrals read: “Wants to die,” “Says he’ll kill himself if he blows trial,” “Can’t hold on much longer,” “Says he’s innocent and no one will listen,” “Mother just died—distraught,” “First incarceration—can’t stop crying.” I put them back in the basket. The stakes here were much higher than at Rose Singer. But it was okay, I told myself. I’d do what I’d always done—listen to these men, connect with their humanity, and learn from this veteran team.
Pat then suggested a tour of the clinic, just a short walk down the hall from our office. At the clinic entryway, a female officer was seated at a small desk. The nameplate pinned to her uniform read “Edwards.” “Mary,” said Pat, “I’d like you to meet Miss Edwards. She’s our Mental Health officer and we’d be lost without her.” I reached out my hand to a petite Black woman. “Hello,” she said, tersely. After the dour Officer Overton, I wasn’t surprised by her tepid welcome, and Pat gave me a little wink as we stepped past her desk.
The Mental Health area was long and narrow, divided in half lengthwise by a Plexiglas wall. A door at the end connected the two sides. The right side was a waiting area with a long row of colored plastic chairs pushed up against the cinder-block wall. On the other side were semiprivate session booths; toward the back was an open space for group therapy.
The waiting room chairs were empty, the morning session almost over. But in one of the booths, an inmate who was little more than a teenager quietly wept; in another, a scruffy older man in a torn flannel shirt struggled to answer Dr. Goodwin’s queries as to where he was and the time of day.
Pat directed me to an empty booth. “This one will be yours.”
With a little desk and two chairs, it was small but adequate.
A sharp yell came from Officer Edwards: “That’s it, folks!” For emphasis, she beat the plastic window with her small fist. “That’s it!” she shouted. “Feedings are starting—time for inmates to clear out!”
I looked at my watch. Although it was only 10:15, lunchtime at Rikers is at 10:30.
After the remaining inmates had left, Pat resumed my orientation, pointing to a small button on the wall behind my desk. “That button,” she said, “will sound an alarm if you ever feel you’re in danger. If you push it, the squad will come running.”
“Do these buttons get pushed often?”
“No, but good to have them—just in case.”
With the clinic tour complete, we were about to leave when Pat stopped short in the doorway. “Too late!” snapped Officer Edwards. “Houses are moving!”
Out in the corridor, long silent lines of inmates now filled the halls, each line representing an entire fifty-inmate house. With green plastic cups in hand, the houses were headed to the mess hall. Unlike in the women’s jail, where the women noisily meandered to the cafeteria, talking here was prohibited.
A few yards away, one of these lines had halted in front of a strip of duct tape affixed to the floor that served as a traffic marking. The men were dark-skinned, heavily tattooed, and mostly young. With ID badges clipped to their T-shirts, they shifted from one leg to the other, eyes darting about. Although their jeans, T-shirts, and sneakers were the garb of the detainee, they bore the subdued look of prisoners.
An angry officer marched back and forth, inspecting the line. “I said—shut—the fuck—up!”
A youth caught my eye and gave me a sad little smile.
“Take—the bodies—down!” came a command from around the corner. “Take it down!”
The house started moving. With sneakers squeaking against the floor, the line silently rounded the bend, while the next house was coming forward.
“Come on,” said Pat. “Let’s go!”
The two of us darted out and ducked into our office just as the new line approached.
16
The next morning, I was ready to begin. With a couple of referrals in hand, I settled in at my session booth and took a deep breath. The first referral simply said “Anxious,” and the second one read “First incarceration—evaluate for depression.”
There was little time for first-day jitters as Miss Edwards shouted, “Miss Buser! you got one!”
I stepped out to the waiting area where Hector Rodriquez, the “anxious” inmate, was pacing the floor. “Sit down, Mr. Rodriquez—sit down!” yelled Edwards. I introduced myself, and he stood still long enough to shake my hand, but as soon as we were seated, his legs jiggled wildly. “Can you get me out of here, miss? Can you get me back to the Brooklyn House? They brought me out here to Rikers last night. I don’t know why. My mother’s very sick—she’ll never be able to make the trip out here. We don’t have a car. She could die! My bail’s only a few hundred bucks, but we don’t have it. At least let me see my family. Please, miss! Please! Can you help me?”
Overhearing him, Janet, who was engrossed in paperwork nearby, leaned out and beckoned me, and I excused myself briefly. “You’re going to see a lot of this,” she whispered. “Most of the boroughs have their own jailhouse, but because of the huge numbers of people arrested, most are held here on Rikers. The thing is, the smaller jails are closer to home, easier for family visits. They all want to go back, and you can’t blame them, but this is a DOC matter. Don’t get pulled into this. You have to tell him there’s nothing Mental Health can do. We can help him with the anxiety, but not a transfer.”
I returned to Rodriquez and repeated what Janet had told me. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “Maybe you could speak to a captain or someone in DOC.”
“Yeah, I should do that,” he said, with a glimmer of hope. “Maybe this is just temporary. I’ll talk to a captain—yeah, that’s what I’ll do! Maybe they’ll send me back.”
He declined any further mental health support, and as he stood trembling at Edwards’s desk, waiting for a hall pass, I wished I could have done more. But more than that, I was confused. Hector Rodriquez had been arrested and charged with a crime that he may or may not have committed. He had yet to have his day in court. But in the interim, because he couldn’t make bail—for lack of a few hundred dollars—not only could he not remain at home with his family, he was remanded to an inaccessible island. His pretrial incarceration was not a question of guilt or innocence—it was a question of money!
But I couldn’t dwell on it. My next referral was already signing the logbook. I walked him to my booth, noticing that the lanky Antwan Williams was fighting back tears. As soon as we were seated, he doubled over and began rocking, “Oh, God, miss! They want to give me twenty years! Jesus Christ! They got me on a drug sale.”
Putting my intake questionnaire aside, I listened as the thirty-year-old Williams told me what had happened. “It started out like nothing,” he whispered. “I’m not a bad guy—I was just desperate. That’s why I did it.” He explained that he was the center of an immigrant family from Jamaica, a hard-working clan that had scraped and borrowed to open a small bodega in Brooklyn. But despite their best efforts, the store struggled. Antwan had a younger brother, Tariq, a twenty-two-year-old with no interest in shopkeeping. Instead, Tariq sold drugs. But Tariq’s life in the fast lane came to a violent end when rival drug dealers shot him dead on a street corner. “It was horrible,” Antwan whispered. “After Tariq was killed, everything changed. Things were going bad at the bodega to begin with, but after that, it went downhill fast and I was borrowing money everywhere I could. And th
en Tariq’s friends came by and told me Tariq was owed a lot of money, and they thought it should go to his family. I didn’t ask questions—I just said, ‘Give it to me!’ But they said if I wanted it, there was a few things I had to do. I was desperate, and out of my mind over my brother’s murder. Everyone was looking to me for answers—it was too much. So I said okay, and I started carrying duffel bags to different drop-offs. Small stuff—and these guys gave me a lot of money for doing practically nothing. It was so easy. Just so easy. And my wife was saying, ‘What are you doing?—look what happened to Tariq!’ I told her I was only going to do it a few more times—just enough to recover from the store and get out.”
But it was too late. While parked in his car one afternoon, Antwan Williams was surrounded by police. “They put a gun to my head and told me to get out. Then they put me in handcuffs, took me to a precinct, and played back a tape—one of the guys I was dealing with was wired. They had me red-handed! I’ve never been in jail before—I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, I can’t think. I swear to God, miss, if it wasn’t for my kids, I’d string up a sheet and end it—I swear to God I would!”
Lockdown on Rikers Page 13