John J. Lennon reviews Rikers: An Oral History in The Atlantic.
EXCERPT
For the past 21 years, I’ve been locked up, mostly in maximum-security prisons: Clinton, Attica, Sing Sing, and now Sullivan, in the Catskills. But before my sentencing, I spent a few years on New York City’s Rikers Island. That period, and the year I did on the island as a teenager, was, by far, the most brutal.
You go to prison after you get sentenced. You go to a jail, like the ones housed in the sprawling mega-complex on Rikers, after you’re arrested and denied bail or can’t afford it. Jail is a tension-filled place, with months-long stretches between court dates, hours of nothingness, clashes over who’s next on the phone or who didn’t get extras on chicken day. What makes jail so hard is not knowing what is to become of you.
Rikers is a whole island filled with people at the worst point in their life. In their new book, Rikers: An Oral History, Graham Rayman and Reuven Blau reveal that the jail robs something from the people who live and work there. Through themed topical chapters — “Bullpen Therapy,” “Race,” “Gangs,” “Mental Health” — the authors create a vivid picture of what life on the island is like. What becomes clear is that the people aren’t what makes it bad — the environment is.