Lockdown on Rikers: Shocking Stories of Abuse and Injustice at New York's Notorious Jail - Hardcover

Buser, Mary E.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1250077842 ISBN 13: 9781250077844

Verlag: ST MARTINS PR, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

<p><b>Winner of the 2016 Brooklyn Eagles Literary Prize for Non-Fiction</b><br><br>Mary Buser began her career at Rikers Island as a social work intern, brimming with ideas and eager to help incarcerated women find a better path. Her reassignment to a men's jail coincided with the dawn of the city's "stop-and-frisk" policy, a flood of unprecedented arrests, and the biggest jailhouse build-up in New York City history.<br><br>Committed to the possibility of growth for the scarred and tattooed masses who filed into her session booth, Buser was suddenly faced with black eyes, punched-out teeth, and frantic whispers from these inmates that they'd been beaten by officers. Recognizing the greater danger of pointing a finger at one's captors, Buser attempted to help them, while also keeping them as well as herself, safe. Following her promotion to assistant chief, she was transferred to different jails, working in the Mental Health Center, and finally, at Rikers's notorious "jail within jail," the dreaded solitary confinement unit, where she saw horrors she'd never imagined. Finally, it became too much to bear, forcing Buser to flee Rikers and never look back - until now.<br><br><i>Lockdown on Rikers</i> shines a light into the deepest and most horrific recesses of the criminal justice system, and shows how far it has really drifted from the ideals we espouse.</p>

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<b>MARY E. BUSER</b> worked in the Mental Health Department on Rikers Island from 1995 to 2000. She co-founded the Samaritans of New York suicide prevention hotline, and served as its first executive director. She is an outspoken advocate against the inhumane treatment of the incarcerated, especially the mentally ill, and those in solitary confinement. She has been published in <i>The Washington Post</i> and featured in <i>The New York Times</i> and the <i>NY Daily News</i>. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

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Lockdown on Rikers

Shocking Stories of Abuse and Injustice at New York's Notorious Jail

By Mary E. Buser

St. Martin's Press

Copyright © 2015 Mary E. Buser
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-250-07784-4

CHAPTER 1

On a gray September morning in 1991, I stood in front of Bloomingdale's on Manhattan's Upper East Side, eagerly waiting for my ride. As a graduate student at Columbia University's School of Social Work, I was beginning a yearlong internship at Rikers Island. I would report to New York City's notorious correctional complex three days a week to provide emotional and psychiatric support to incarcerated women. While most people would balk at the mere thought of working with criminals, as soon as I learned about this assignment, I was intrigued. It incorporated my most important aspirations: to help the poor and underprivileged and to become a psychotherapist. The fact that the poor and underprivileged in this setting were also accused of crimes barely fazed me. Already in my mid-thirties, I had prior experience, not only with people in emotional distress, but with the incarcerated.

I grew up during the sixties in a middle-class family on suburban Long Island. My father was a lawyer, and my mother was a homemaker and, later, a high school English teacher. Altruism was encouraged, both at home and in the Catholic school I attended. Even though our primary exposure to crime and racial strife came by way of the evening news, we were taught that helping the less fortunate was our responsibility, an ideal I took to heart. But it wasn't only inner-city turmoil that flashed across the TV screen. The whole country was grappling with waves of change during the sixties, and I remember being drawn to the grainy images of the civil rights marches. Even then, I felt strongly about justice and fairness, not yet realizing that years later, despite all the country's strides forward, I would discover a world beyond the reach of the six o'clock news, where inhumanity had found a whole new mode of ugly expression.

As the oldest of seven children in a family that was as loving as it was dysfunctional, I often found myself in the role of listener and peacemaker. Sometimes at the kitchen table my mother would take off her glasses and rub her eyes, and I would listen as she told me how overwhelmed she felt by the day-to-day demands of raising a large family. Then she would replace her glasses, smile, and pat my arm. But I knew she felt a little better for having been heard. Everyone needs to be heard.

In school, I was the one friends brought their troubles to. Whether it was anxiety over grades, fear for a parent battling cancer, or boyfriend woes, I quietly listened, noticing that as my pals talked things through, they usually felt better. Early on, I discovered that simply being heard is a great soother of life's intangible hurts and struggles.

After college, I volunteered at a Boston-based suicide prevention hotline called the Samaritans. No longer was I talking just with family and friends; now I was comforting total strangers. Whether it was an isolated elderly person who needed to talk or a distraught young man thinking about ending it all, I listened, allowing them to express their deepest levels of despair. And like a pipe releasing steam, more often than not their tears dried and their depression lifted. At least for the moment, they found the peace and relief that comes from being deeply heard by another. I couldn't imagine being part of something more important.

And then I decided to take things a step further. The Samaritans operated several outreach programs, one of them being a novel jailhouse program. The program had come about when a rash of suicides at Boston's Charles Street Jail prompted alarm among city officials, who turned to the Samaritans. The result was Lifeline, a program designed to teach a group of inmates the same suicide prevention techniques we used on the hotline. In a setting better known for prisoners yelling "Jump!" to a despondent inmate posturing to end his life, it was hard to imagine incarcerated men coming together like this. But they did. Not only that, but after the Lifeline intervention, the annual suicide rate, which had been approaching double digits, dropped to zero.

I found this astonishing — proof positive of the power of the human connection! I also knew I had to be part of it. The Lifeline team went into the jail every Wednesday night to support the Samaritan inmates, and on a cold winter evening I joined my fellow volunteers on the jailhouse steps for the first time. At twenty-three, I was the youngest in the crew. Nervous but eager, I followed along as guards led us through barred gates until we reached a room where five inmates sat behind a long table. As we took our place across from them, they did not seem particularly threatening but rather ordinary, save for the elaborate tattoos that decorated their forearms. After introductions were made, the Lifeline leader asked the men about their week as "jailhouse Samaritans." They unfolded their crossed arms, and their hard faces softened as they took turns describing how they'd tried to comfort the despairing and suicidal in their own ranks. Of particular concern was a newly arrested inmate named Johnny, who was crying and leaving his food tray untouched. Anthony and Lamar, the most extroverted of the five, had approached him. "We asked him if he wanted to talk a little," said Anthony, "you know — about how he was feeling and stuff."

"He looked kinda surprised," the ponytailed Lamar deadpanned.

"Yeah," Anthony laughed, "to say the least. But he took us up on it, he talked, all right. Flat out told us he was thinking about stringing up a sheet. Then he lost it — cried like a baby. Told us he'd never been arrested before, that he'd lose his job, didn't know how his family was going to get by, and was scared to death. And we just let him talk. We didn't interrupt him."

"And when he was done," said Lamar, "we told him we'd be with him. And he kept on saying, 'Thank you, Thank you.' Later on, he called his wife and looked a little calmer when he got off. He may have even eaten a little. But we're going to keep an eye on him."

"Well done!" said the Lifeline leader. As the rest of us joined in, acknowledging their fine efforts, Anthony and Lamar were beaming. As the evening wore on, I melded into the conversation, and by the time the session ended, I'd almost forgotten where I was. After that night I became a Lifeline regular, and those Wednesday evening jailhouse visits were a cherished part of my week. Although I never did learn why those five men had been arrested, in terms of our particular mission, it didn't matter. But what did matter to me was that I was supporting the goodness and humanity in the world — even in this unlikeliest of places.

My Samaritans experience was so profound that I moved back to New York and cofounded the Samaritans of New York. Without forms to fill out or payment to be negotiated, New Yorkers in emotional distress could call our hotline for a caring human connection. I became the hotline's first executive director and expanded the operation to include a speakers' bureau on suicide prevention and Safe Place, a group forum for those who'd lost a loved one to suicide. I was especially pleased to have assisted the NYPD in producing a suicide prevention film that was shown to all incoming cadets. Yet as fulfilled as I was, six years later I had grown weary of fund-raising, budgets, and board issues. From my paper-strewn desk, I watched our volunteers taking calls from phones that I hadn't answered in years. Hard...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: ST MARTINS PR
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2015
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1250077842
• ISBN 13: 9781250077844
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 288
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar