‘It drives a crazy person crazy in a box, man’
it’s for x amount of days. See, back then when I was going to the box, they used to be able to give you a year, a hundred days, four hundred.
It drives a crazy person crazy in a box, man. They come out a different person. So now they have it set up to where you only [have] thirty days a pop and they take you out. They let you get it together a little bit and then come snatch you and you do a little bit more time. But the box is just brutal, man.
BARRY CAMPBELL, detained 1980s, 1990s: My first time in solitary, I thought that this is nothing. What is everybody talking about? The first time you’re in there for about maybe half an hour, forty-five minutes, but this is nothing. And then you realize that you literally have no one to talk to, that you literally are alone in that cell for twenty-three hours. First I did a workout regimen until I couldn’t do it anymore. And then you sing and you bang on the walls too. You can’t do it anymore. And then eventually you find yourself talking to yourself and then eventually you find yourself counting the cockroaches that come through your doors, or how many times you’re going to see a mouse today. And you stare out the window endlessly just looking at the grass and leaves blowing in the winds. People go crazy in there.
DONOVAN DRAYTON: I cried. At the time when I went to the box, where my cell was positioned, you could see the Triborough Bridge, and it was the greatest view and the most hurtful view at the same time because it was just like, yo, I may never, ever go across this bridge again a free man. Like the next time, they may drive my casket back to my dad’s to bury me free.
KATHY MORSE, detained 2006: [W]e would receive grievances from individuals who were in solitary. And it was a dungeon. I thought that the noise in the housing unit was surreal, but the noise in solitary was unbelievable. You had people banging on their walls, just screaming. It was so bad. It wasn’t even like it was a human being who was screaming. It was more like an animal who was hurt, screaming for help.
KAREN SESSOMS, correction officer, 1991 to 1993: As a correction officer, this is not a place where you want to just sit. You want to constantly walk around. When you are watching them, they are watching you. You can hear things being sharpened, usually weapons.
ELIAS HUSAMUDEEN, president of the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, 2016 to 2020: Ninety-nine percent of the inmates never came back once they did their ten days, thirty days, fifty days. It pretty much helped in addressing the behavior that was unacceptable thirty years ago and now. But the one percent it didn’t work on is where I believe we failed. The definition of insanity is to keep on doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome.
DONOVAN DRAYTON: It’s hard, man. Just being in a room with yourself for so many days. It can drive you literally insane. You know what, if you’re not mentally tough and mentally stable, it’ll change you. You see what happened to Kalief Browder? You know, he went to jail, he was mentally stable. He came home from prison, mentally shot. Rikers Island killed that man.
MICHAEL LOVE, detained early 1980s, early 1990s: There was an [officer]. He came to extract me. I wasn’t coming out. He grabbed me by my T-shirt and pulled me so hard it left a scar on my neck that I still have. He slammed me against the wall. He said, “I’m going to break your arm,” and I said, “Go ahead and break the [expletive].” It’s psychologically induced fatalism. You don’t care about consequences. That night he took off all my clothes, threw me in my cell, and left the window open. It was winter. That happened probably around ’76 or ’77. I was about eighteen.
BARRY CAMPBELL: [When you get out] it’s like being released from jail, prison. Literally. If you went in there for something substantial, when you come out, everybody is like, “Boy, you are a crazy-ass dude.” You know they gonna put you back soon. And so there’s a certain reputation that follows you if you went in there for something that was violent as opposed to being caught with a pack of cigarettes. So when you come out, most of the people, if you were a violent person, most of the people know what you went in there for. They get worried when you come out.
From the book “Rikers: An Oral History” by Graham Rayman and Reuven Blau
Copyright © 2023 by Graham Rayman and Reuven Blau
Published by arrangement with Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC.