The physician rachaelbedard writes, “My colleagues and I joked grimly that Rikers Island was like the worst cruise ship in the world: our patients were held in close proximity, in violent, unsanitary conditions, without freedom of movement.”
arrived, in late 2020, there was no concomitant wave of decarceration. The District Attorneys’ offices seemed tired of being told that they couldn’t send people to jail. My colleagues and I continued to submit letters attesting to our patients’ risk of getting sick from the virus, but we were told by public defenders and prosecutors alike that no one was taking our pleas seriously anymore.
I returned from leave just in time for the Delta wave that summer. By this point, vaccines had been available for some time, but uptake among detainees was spotty. I walked around one of the tougher buildings with my favorite nurse and physician’s assistant as they reassured, cajoled, and sparred with guys who were reluctant to take the shot.
I toured intake one morning with one of my team’s social workers, Justin Butler, and was shocked by what we saw: cages of hundreds of men, most of them Black, standing in urine and feces, their arms through the bars, yelling for help. A nurse showed us a shower stall that had been turned into a makeshift segregation cell, where a twenty-five year old namedhad died by suicide the week before.
Fifteen people died in Rikers custody in 2021. By year’s end, I would go to work and spend most of the day talking to my colleagues and patients about whether the prior day’s news coverage of the Rikers crisis had been accurate or not.
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