opinion
PC, NOT VIP
We had a saying when I worked there: ‘If they had no mental health issues before they entered solitary, they do now!’
Mary E. Buser, author of the award-winning Lockdown on Rikers: Shocking Stories of Abuse and Injustice at New York’s Notorious Jail, was a clinical social worker in the Rikers Island Mental Health Department. She served as Assistant Chief of Mental Health in the island’s 500-cell Punitive Segregation Unit. Since leaving Rikers, she has been an outspoken advocate for the incarcerated, especially the mentally ill and those held in solitary confinement. Prior to Rikers, she co-founded the Samaritans of New York suicide prevention hotline.