Within any brutal and isolated institution, new language tends to form, like scar tissue. In the 1990s, Rikers Island — New York City’s largest jail, encircled by the East River—was no exception. Corrections officers, mental health workers, and administrators had a special name for inmates in solitary confinement whom they believed faked suicidal tendencies in order to be placed under mental observation: “bing monsters.” “Bing,” a common word on the inside for solitary confinement, evokes the feeling of a brain clouding and sanity suddenly snapping — bing! “Monster” because for many jail staffers there was nothing worse than a malingering inmate who used up precious prison resources by feigning madness.
In her new memoir, Lockdown on Rikers, Mary Buser recounts how, during a decade-long career in health care at Rikers Island, she went from a chipper, idealistic mental health counselor to a disillusioned administrator (always with a cigarette handy in the later days). Her professional stint at the jail began in 1991 as a part-time intern, while she was a graduate student at Columbia University’s School for Social Work, and ended with her practically running the mental health department of the Otis Bantum Correctional Center, the complex that houses Rikers’ Punitive Segregation Unit.
Throughout her plainspoken, harrowing memoir Buser is sensitive to how word choice can mask and manage the horrors of prison life, and of solitary confinement in particular. Her linguistic flexibility was, after all, a talent she was selected for as a counselor, the ability to make a potentially life-changing connection with every inmate she encountered. But by the end of her time at Rikers words like “rehabilitate” and “therapy” lose out to “stabilize” and “contain.” Buser’s memoir demonstrates how mental health workers, supposedly the peaceful, civilian presence in a correctional center, can end up perpetrating institutional violence themselves. Even those as conscientious as Buser.
The mid-1990s marked the peak of Rikers’ incarcerated population, when the complex held some 24,000 inmates. This swell in the non-violent prison population was part of a national crusade against drug offenders. In New York, the 1973 Rockefeller drug laws introduced dramatic mandatory minimums (15 years to life for being caught trafficking as little as 4 ounces of drugs). These weren’t scaled down until the Drug Law Reform Act of 2004 — even then, mandatory sentences for crimes of the same stature were eight to 20 years. Buser witnessed how the famed “drug sweeps” got low-level drug traffickers, many of them women, mired in the criminal justice system for decades. The mid-to-late 1990s was also the heyday of then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s tough-on-crime strategies that choked the city’s jails. His portrait hung in the lobby at Otis Bantum.
Buser refers to most of these prisoners as “detainees” since Rikers Island is, then as now, largely a holding center for people who are awaiting trial but can’t make bail or have been remanded to custody. Of course most of these cases never make it to trial, resulting in plea bargains instead. Today, though the jail’s total population is about half what it was in Buser’s time, little else about it has changed — 90 percent of inmates at Rikers Island are black or Latino; about 85 percent have not been convicted of a crime; 40 percent have been diagnosed with a mental illness.
And no part of the jail is more brutal than the solitary confinement units.
“I can’t help but feel that [solitary confinement] has all the earmarks of torture,” Buser muses.
In this particular scene she’s reacting to the case of inmate Troy Jackson, who’s beaten his head bloody against his cell wall. Buser can see clear to his skull. Her orders as mental health administrator are to keep him alive and keep other inmates from duplicating his actions, nothing more.
“When you call someone a monster, or a skel, or a body, then it suddenly becomes okay to do whatever you want to them because they’re not really human beings,” Buser writes. This is how you get doctor-certified torture at a black site just a land-bridge away from one of the wealthiest cities in the country. First “people” become “bodies” then “torture” becomes “segregation.” The dirty secret is locked behind a wall of semantics.
Buser’s anecdotes from Rikers, where few stories ever get out to the general public, are much needed today. Two years ago the U.N. published a report by its Special Rapporteur on Torture, stating that solitary confinement of 15 days or more is torture. Between 2007 and 2013, the number of solitary confinement cells in Rikers increased by 60 percent. In 2014 the stories of Kalief Browder, who began three years at Rikers, much of it in solitary, at the age of 16, only to have all charges against him dropped, and Jerome Murdough, a homeless veteran who baked to death in one of the jail’s mental health units, brought fresh attention to harsh confinement conditions.
In April 2014, Mayor Bill de Blasio hired a new Department of Corrections commissioner, Joseph Ponte, a veteran of private prison administration who has been touted by the government and media alike as a proven criminal justice “reformer.” Ponte vowed to “end the culture of excessive solitary confinement.” Integral to his plan was the construction of a new Enhanced Security Housing unit, which he was adamant would be a non-punitive, “therapeutic” alternative to solitary confinement.
Yet two months after the ESH unit opened in February, the Board of Corrections released its first report—and it was scathing, noting that there had been several violent incidents and that many inmates felt unsafe. “Several ESH inmates have expressed to BOC staff they prefer being confined in punitive segregation than being housed in ESH,” the report reads. “They know that a punitive segregation sentence is for a fixed period of time; the duration of a stay in ESH is uncertain.”
Dostoevsky famously wrote that “A society can be judged by the condition of its jails.” This proverb, Buser notes, is inscribed above the entryway to the George Motchan Detention Center, one of the largest of Rikers Island’s jails. In a way, it’s the perfect institutional phrase, morally compelling yet sanitized of standards. It’s a potentially radical message, at least in America: Jails aren’t the social exception, they are the social rule. When a jail as depraved as Rikers openly proclaims this, it doesn’t realize or can’t admit how sick it really is.
Hannah K. Gold is a Brooklyn-based freelance writer.
Caption: The door of an EHS unit inside Rikers Island in New York, Thursday, March 12, 2015.
The last week of July and the first week of August 1970 I served on jury duty in the Criminal Court Building on Centre Street in lower Manhattan. The prisoners were brought to the jail cells in the basement called The Tombs when there trial was about to begin. They were held before this on Rikers Island which is why there are about 85% of the inmates there unconvicted. They are waiting trial.
It was 95F every day in Manhattan while I was doing the jury service. The prisoners were roasting in the basement. The judges only had four week terms during the summer at this time. It was summer, and they wanted to have their holiday. They were not taking on any new cases during the last week of July 1970.
Every day about 250 of us showed up for jury duty, and every day after a couple hours we were sent home. I used to go back to work. There were no trials that needed jurors being started at this time because the judges did not want to get caught in a trial that would keep them in the Criminal Court Building in lower Manhattan during the heat of the summer when they could be off on holiday themselves relaxing wherever. They were not concerned with justice and the need to do their job.
The following week during the first week of August 1970, a new rota of judges started who had four weeks themselves to serve and started trying cases. This week us potential jurors were being provided as possible jurors for criminal cases.
One was a sodomy case when that was still a crime in New York State. I was bounced off that jury during selection. Another was a drug bust that depended on police testimony. I was bounced off that jury during selection based upon police testimony where I was considered to favour the police.
There was an historic case where there was a civil case to be tried with six jurors as a result of the US Supreme Court ruling that this could be done if a litigant wanted a civil case jury. I went over to the Civil Court with the panel of jurors for this case, but they quickly selected six people before reaching me.
It was a busy week where we had to stay each day to see if we were needed unlike the previous week when the Criminal Courts had ground to a halt. The temperature was still 95F each day. I never got selected for a jury.
The following week when I was back at work, The Tombs erupted in rioting. The backlog without any proceedings during the last week of July had impacted the inmates in the basement of the Criminal Court building. Despite the court’s wheels beginning to turn once again, the inmates exploded into rioting in that 95F heat because they were in the basement. Who knows how hot it must have been there.
I am sure that no one ever connected the fact that the judges themselves were responsible for this rioting. They blamed it on the inmates. Unless there was someone like me who was present and knew exactly what was happening, they would most certainly cover up the real reason and never hold the judges themselves responsible for the failure to administer justice properly to alleviate the rioting which I believe was the causative factor.
This is why I believe this bit of information is most important concerning Rikers Island today which is a hell hole itself where those awaiting trial are kept pending their transfer to The Tombs when their trial is about to begin. Nothing much has changed in 45 years. [I posted this on Facebook & Google+ which is why it’s written as it is.
Excellent analysis, you have triggered debate and criticism. On October 16, 2015, we call on the PEOPLE to attend the meeting of the Board of Corrections at 455 1st Avenue @ 1PM to Support Stanley Richards, the first ex-prisoner to serve as a member of the Board of Corrections, and oppose the increasingly repressive policies of Commissioner Ponte! Support Stanley, Oppose Ponte!!!
@rrheard-where is your bullshit excuse for the Bar Association doing nothing?
Great piece! This reality is a giant shit stain on the fabric of America!
First, some people really do deserve to be in prison, there are violent robbers, rapists, etc. But…
Where is Bill Cosby? Where is Rodney King? Where are those who died before even getting to court?
Also, there is a big difference between a “Jail” and “Prison”. Jails are, supposed to be, temporary holding facilities for people whom the police have charged with crime but have not yet been before a Judge and/or a Jury and have not been convicted of their “crime”.
That is a point lost on the majority of Americans. People “in Jail” have not been convicted of any crime, but are “pending of a trial or judgement” of an alleged crime.
I, for example, was arrested for “crime”, jailed for a few days in a small local jail with just a few cells, brought to a judge, and found “Not Guilty” by the judge, and let go. Such things happen every day all across the U.S. It’s “how things work.”
But, and it’s a huge but, many people get arrested and “thrown in jail” and are subsequently “forgotten” by society, where they languish and despair.
Rikers is a Jail, not a Prison. The people in there are not convicted criminals. They are people who need their day in court to decide their fate. They need adequate representation when they get to court. And they need to get to court…
“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial,”
Which is part of our “Bill of Rights”, that too many seem to be either not aware of or actively ignorant of.
Not, by far, are all people in jails awaiting trial. Many are serving sentences for conviction. That also applies to Rikers Island inmates. For example, Cecily McMillan served her sentencing time at Rikers from the conviction of her interactions with an abusive cop during Occupy.
The dehumanization of the majority of those who comprise the prison population in the United States begins long before their initial prison sentence is handed out. Lack of adequate role models within the home, inferior school systems that are severely underfunded and poorly staffed, environmentally induced negative reinforcement, minority status and culture, prevalence of drug abuse in poor urban communities, and the lack of economic opportunity in poor urban areas are all cited in studies as correlatives to criminal behavior. Further compounding the likelihood of criminal behavior is the inculcated belief that a person’s worth in American society is directly proportional to the amount of tax that revenue he/she is able to generate for the system.
All of what “Karl” said is pure, 100%, unadulterated bullshit spread to accuse “pseudo-liberals” of being “liberals”. Drug use is prevalent, even more prevalent, in rich white communities.
And equating taxation to criminality is just fraking absurd. But, private, for-profit prisons certainly are a boon to many corporations!
“Drug use is prevalent, even more prevalent, in rich white communities.”
Do you have any evidence to back this statement up?
“And equating taxation to criminality is just fraking absurd.”
I would be but for the fact that I did not equate taxation with criminality.
From a Truthout interview of Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, here is an excerpt addressing that:
Truthout
An article about a book that provides no substantiation for is claims is not evidence.
The article is an interview of the books author.
There used to be a time that when someone reads or hears information disseminated from someone who claims to have done a lot of research to find that information, the questioning party (that would be you) would then take the time to locate from where that information came from, rather than to automatically dismiss it with snotty little statements such as, “An article about a book that provides no substantiation for is claims is not evidence.” In fact, that “time” still exists. It’s just that each individual person has to take responsibility if they are actually interested in learning about the subject they are attempting to discuss.
I happen to own that book. I’m currently in the process of reading it. As books tend to do, it has a “notes” section which, as “notes” tend to do, refers to from where information in the book came from. You, as a free and able adult person, might want to consider bothering yourself to locate the available information/evidence yourself. It can be done. You just have to try, rather than resorting to being a sniping little brat who can’t be bothered.
“I happen to own that book. I’m currently in the process of reading it. As books tend to do, it has a “notes” section which, as “notes” tend to do, refers to from where information in the book came from. ”
If you have the book, then it would be easy to provide the referenced sources derived from the notes so that others might examine the validity of your assertions. I have no idea if that which you chose to quote from the book was sourced or not. For example:
A study entitled “The inner city and drug use; initial finding from an epidemiological study (1997)”compared the data and results of four studies that took place during the same period of time in an effort to test the validity of social disorganization theory which held that there was a correlation between rates of drug addiction and other social problems found in urban black communities including inadequate family life, poverty, ineffective education, and social isolation. Although the study’s findings weighed heavily against the idea that a large majority of those (blacks) from the inner city become seriously involved in heavy alcohol or drug use, it concluded that “those children who grow up in the inner city and remain there have important disadvantages with regard to drug use – they are more like to be current drug users and they are more likely to be in a neighborhood with heavy drug trafficking.”
Asking Jon Steward to provide substantiation for the express claim that “Drug use is prevalent, even more prevalent, in rich white communities” is a perfectly legitimate response in any respectful exchange of ideas. If you then choose to join the conversation in an attempt to provide that substantiation, then I am entitled to challenge its apparent lack of merit. Characterizing my response as snooty belies your claim that you “are actually interested in learning about the subject” that is being discussed. Rather, you have once again chosen to characterize my request in a way that allows you to fall back on your Chronic pattern of attacking with invective those that harbor opposing opinions. Different day, same ignorant malice.
To summarize: Your question to Jon Steward showed that you are ignorant about the subject. I provided an outlet to you so that if you were willing to do the footwork you could lessen your level of ignorance. You chose to remain ignorant because you’d rather say shit like, “Different day, same ignorant malice.”
Just an FYI, I took another look at the notes about that subject in Michelle Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow. There’s a ton of information sitting there waiting for you to educate yourself with. Unless, as it seems, you are not “actually interested in learning about the subject.”
Pages 99 & 100 of “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander
…it remains the case that African Americans are incarcerated at grossly disproportionate rates throughout the United States.
There is, of course, an official explanation for all of this: crime rates. This explanation has tremendous appeal–before you know the facts–for it is consistent with, and reinforces, dominant racial narratives about crime and criminality dating back to slavery. The truth, however, is that rates and patterns of drug crime do not explain the glaring racial disparities in our criminal justice system. People of all races use and sell illegal drugs at remarkably similar rates. If there are significant differences in the surveys to be found, they frequently suggest that whites, particularly white youth, are more likely to engage in illegal drug dealing than people of color. One study, for example, published in 2000 by the National Institute on Drug Abuse reported that white students use cocaine at seven times the rate of black students, use crack cocaine at eight times the rate of black students, and use heroine at seven times the rate of black students. That same survey revealed that nearly identical percentages of white and black high school seniors use marijuana. The National Household Survey on Drug Abuse reported in 2000 that white youth aged 12-17 are more than a third more likely to have sold illegal drugs than African American youth. Thus the very same year Human Rights Watch was reporting that African Americans were being arrested and imprisoned at unprecedented rates, government data revealed that blacks were no more likely to be guilty of drug crimes than whites an that white youth were actually the most likely of any racial or ethnic group to be guilty of illegal drug possession and sales. Any notion that drug use among blacks is more severe or dangerous is belied by the data; white youth have about three times the number of drug-related emergency room visits as their African American counterparts.
The notion that whites comprise the vast majority of drug users and dealers–and may be more likely than other racial groups to commit drug crimes–may seem implausible to some, given the media imagery we are all fed on a daily basis and the racial composition of our prisons and jails. Upon reflection, however, the prevalence of white drug crime–including drug dealing–should not be surprising. After all, where do whites get their illegal drugs? Do they all drive to the ghetto to purchase them from somebody standing on the street corner? No. Studies consistently indicate that drug markets, like American society generally, reflect our nations racial and socioeconomic boundaries.
…
The notion that most illegal drug use and sales happens in the ghetto is pure fiction. Drug trafficking occurs there, but it occurs everywhere else in America as well. Nevertheless, black men have been admitted to state prison on drug charges at a rate that is more than thirteen times higher than white men. The racial bias inherent in the drug war is a major reason that 1 in every 14 black men was behind bars in 2006, compared with 1 in every 106 white men. For young black men the statistics are even worse. One in 9 black men between the ages of twenty and thirty-five was behind bars in 2006, and far more were under some form of penal control–such as probation or parole. These gross racial disparities simply cannot be explained by rates of illegal drug activity among African Americans.
______________________________________________________________________________
I transcribed from the book so apologies for any typos or errors of any sort.
Michelle Alexander was in error when she claimed that the National Institute on Drug Abuse reported the fact that cocaine use was 7 time higher among white students then blacks. Even if one does not question the validity of the data in that report, the maximum reported difference was roughly six to one in a “lifetime estimate” of use, but only among the twelfth graders who participated in the study. Beyond the fact that this is an extremely small sampling for a single drug, the NIADA report also acknowledges that the statistically significant truancy and drop out rate for Black seniors was higher than that for Whites or Hispanic drug users. So, the ratio is far less statistically significant then Alexander would have us believe.
“Comparing the percentage of children and teens in different racial/ethnic groups who feel it is okay to sell drugs indicates that White students are less favorably disposed to drug dealing than are Black and Hispanic students. For example, in 2000, an estimated 17 percent of White teens reported strongly or somewhat agreeing with the statement that it is okay to sell drugs to make money. In that same year, an estimated 27 percent of Black teens and an estimated 24 percent of Hispanic teens expressed these values.”
Be mindful of the fact that these statistics were garnered from surveys of people living in the community. If Michelle Alexander’s claim the blacks were 13 times more likely to be incarcerated for drug related crimes than whites is correct, then the number of blacks who use and deal are significantly greater than the surveys suggest as data collected from prisoner surveys were not included in this report. So, too, only data collected from persons whose age was over 12 was included.
Again, In 2013, the National Survey on Drug Use and Health reported:
“In 2013, among persons aged 12 or older, the rate of current illicit drug use was 3.1 percent
among Asians, 8.8 percent among Hispanics, 9.5 percent among whites, 10.5 percent among
blacks, 12.3 percent among American Indians or Alaska Natives, 14.0 percent among Native
Hawaiians or Other Pacific Islanders, and 17.4 percent among persons reporting two or more
races.”
http://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/NSDUHresultsPDFWHTML2013/Web/NSDUHresults2013.pdf
“Your question to Jon Steward showed that you are ignorant about the subject.”
Wrong again Kitt. Recognizing that his assertion was was wrong, I challenged him to provide proof. Something which you failed to do. Even if one was to take what you posted at face value, the author only asserts that “some studies suggest that where significant differences in the data can be found, white youth are more likely to engage in illegal drug dealing than black youth.” Beyond the fact that this line makes no sense absent the proper context, it falls into the trap of citing findings that are clearly not indicated by the vast majority of academic research and crime statistics.
Even more to the point is the fact that Jon Steward’s ignorant retort did not even directly address anything that I wrote. I never claimed that that drug use was “more” prevalent in black communities than in white communities. I merely stated that drug use was “prevalent” in poor urban communities – meaning that it is common. Thus, his argument was, at best, a straw man… as is your current defense of it. I suggest that educate yourself.
“Just an FYI, I took another look at the notes about that subject in Michelle Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow. There’s a ton of information sitting there waiting for you to educate yourself with. Unless, as it seems, you are not ‘actually interested in learning about the subject.'”
It is not up to me to provide substantiation for the baseless assertions that you make in a public forum.
in america your chance of being beaten, brutalized, tortured and or summarily killed by hormone overdosed psycho’s in militarized uniforms with badges and militarized guns are thousands of times more likely than you ever even getting a glimpse at a real live muslim (middle-eastern_arabic speaking) terrorist
in this world there are places and countries where the govt is not militarized and police are not militarized where you don’t live in fear of the authorities every waking moment of your life
“america what a shithole”
“new york a pustule on the shithole that is america”
Not surprised. The US justice and prison systems are businesses. Their goal is to maximize profits, nothing more. And they train corrections officers to be as ruthlessly barbaric and sadistic as possible towards the inmates to radicalize them and ensure more business. Officers also just get a kick out of torturing the inmates, especially the racial minorities. They need punching bags handy at work since their wives and children are only available at home.
This practice of using solitary confinement as a punitive and disciplinary action is widespread throughout this country. The mentally ill are especially prone to this harsh treatment. In my state there have been several incidents involving a prisoner being totally or mostly forgotten about; one was for several months without sanitary supplies for a female inmate. I would like to see some sweeping changes made but the authorities need the resources to be made available. Maybe some re-thinking of why and how we address the prison problem here in the US.
I know this will never happen but I think those dishing out solitary confinement as punishment should first have to experience it themselves and experience it exactly like the incarcerated person would. I don’t know!
Anyway, speaking of punishment and solitary confinement, I would liken it to being punished as a child. I know it’s not the same but bear with me. And I’m speaking from experience. When a child gets punished, for most of them it creates anger and hatred. So, when a person is incarcerated (punished) and is placed in solitary confinement, I would believe it may have the same affect. To me that’s not what we want to be created in a person who is already full of hatred and anger. Maybe, maybe not.
Solitary confinement is torture in no stretch of the imagination and I don’t believe solitary confinement is the answer . . . it hasn’t worked so far.
Ever get your face cut with a razor blade so badly that you can see your teeth through your cheek? What would you suggest happen to the offender, if not solitary? What if this person has cut multiple people? What if he cut your son, brother, or father? Solitary should be used as a way to protect the general population from these hyper-violent individuals.
Certainly, an inmate who gets hold of a razor blade and cut a fellow inmate (but certantly cannot cut anyone’s son, brother or father who is not also incarcerated), may deserve some time “in the hole”, but aren’t you just making shit up?
You say, “Solitary should be used as a way to protect the general population from these hyper-violent individuals.”
But “Solitary” is used these days on a great many people, including teenagers, for practically nothing at all, basically at the whim of the jailors.
Your shit don’t walk.
Rather disappointed that The Intercept now also uses the term ‘Torture’ so lightly.
If this article was indeed about the effects on people who are >15 days in solitaire confinement then I’d be (somewhat) ok with it. But it doesn’t.
But (imo) the effect now is that torture becomes a household name which is ‘normally’ associated with people who are ‘only’ in jail and not with the horrific things some people, including Americans in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib and in various CIA black sites, have done to other human beings.
I understand and agree that attention should be drawn to the prison problem, but please refrain from using the term torture so lightly.
(I do wonder what the (euphemism?) ‘Enhanced Security Housing’ really stands for)
What are you missing?
“Time Served” sentences are an infamy against every American ideal. I would like to see The Intercept review and highlight the work of the Kentucky legal system to replace the bail vultures with “risk assessment” that is largely, though not entirely, free of factors that do not involve some actual degree of culpability. See http://www.pretrial.org/download/risk-assessment/2010%20KY%20Risk%20Assessment%20Study%20JFA.pdf . I have seen further research – not sure where at the moment – showing that the remaining prejudicial terms (e.g. counting it against someone that they don’t have a fixed address) don’t actually improve the chance of court appearance and can also be eliminated, allowing for fast and automatic determination of who is detained and who isn’t, without reference to money or socioeconomic status.
Whenever people are imprisoned for being poor instead of rich, whenever they are assumed guilty rather than innocent, whenever they are blackmailed into declaring their guilt because the claim of innocence is punished more severely than the crime itself, it is something sick and wrong.