Mary Buser looks more like a sweet, mild mannered elementary school teacher than a jailhouse therapist. Her smile is comforting, and her eyes are warm. Sitting nestled in her cozy living room as her dog, Cha-Cha, happily plays by her feet, she recounts for me horror after horror from the eye-opening few years she spent as a social worker trying to help the forlorn and distressed detainees on Rikers Island.Mary says that the first brutality she witnessed was a correctional officer getting retribution on an inmate. "This guy who had pins in his arm had complained about another officer. When he was transferred to our jail, the COs pointed him out. They said, 'That's the guy,' and I watched him dragged into a room. When he came out all the pins had been stomped out of his arm." The officers were usually very careful not to let what they called the "civilian staff" see the violence, but this time Mary was able to peek through a small window and catch the scene.Read More: Crocheted with Staples: A Look at the Emotional Artwork of Female Inmates
What she'd seen at the Rose M. Singer Center (RMSC), the women's jail on Rikers, had disturbed her, but this was very different. "I had seen women get dragged down the hallway," she says. "That was disturbing, but I was still an intern then."Mary had felt a sense of safety with the women at RMSC, but she was reluctant when offered a position at the George Motchan Detention Center (GMDC), another of the ten jails on the island: GMDC is a men's jail. "I didn't want to go," says Mary, "I felt comfortable with women. I knew men were charged with much more serious crimes, and I was a little concerned initially about my safety." Her old supervisor, Janet, a woman she looked up to, convinced her that the work was the same. "I was nervous. When we got to the top of the stairs on the very first day, there was a trail of blood on the floor. My supervisor just chuckled and said 'Welcome to GMDC.'"When I got to the top of the stairs on the very first day, there was a trail of blood on the floor.
Mary and a supervisor. Photo courtesy of Mary Buser.
In her forthcoming book, Lockdown on Rikers, Mary paints a picture of famous jail during the late 1990s, when crime was going down along with the population at the jail. During that time period, Giuliani's broken windows policy meant Rikers was largely filled with people arrested for misdemeanors. For her, Mary says, one of the most telling things had been explaining to her family and friends the difference between a prison and a jail: The latter is where the accused are held until trial or for short sentences of less than a year, while prison is where one goes to serve any longer sentence. Mary had started to see what she called " the unfairness of all of it all. My focus was on my therapy, my work, but I could no longer ignore the things that went on in these people's lives, or the brutality.""Before Rikers, I believed all the things I think most Americans believe, the principles we were taught at a very young age: Everyone is entitled to a fair trial by a jury of their peers, innocent until proven guilty, and a right to a speedy trial. I thought that with few exceptions that the masses were dealt with fairly." Because of what she witnessed, however, Mary became very cynical and would leave the room in social settings when people she knew were discussing criminal justice, Giuliani's reforms, or even a blip on the news about an incident at Rikers.I could no longer ignore the things that went on in these people's lives, or the brutality.
"I started to become very aware of the whole bail issue," Mary explains. "In a legal sense, these people were innocent. For lack of, in many cases, under $1000, people could spend years waiting for their 'day in court'." She began to understand why so many inmates "copped" to a plea or a reduced charge. "I knew many like Kalief Browder," she says, referring to a young man who spent three years on Rikers Island without being convicted of any crime, who died by suicide this summer. "Stuck on the island for some small thing, [stealing] a backpack or something like that, beaten, thrown into solitary. He was another one who was waiting for his day in court." She says she saw lawyers advising the inmates just to "cop" to any plea so they could just get out.Mary says that the inmates would confide in her once they realized that their words were confidential with her. "Many of them would cry," she recalls, "even the ones that would posture the most in the hallways." It was during those sessions that she really learned about the brutality—not just from other inmates, but from the corrections officers as well. She was often begged by the imamates not to say a word: "Shh, shh, please Miss B, Please don't say anything, please." Mary could see their bruises and marks, but she stressed that not all the correctional officers, or even most of them, were criminal. "Many of [the COs] carried out their jobs honorably and with integrity and tried to do good by the inmates, but where they failed was not intervening with the brutish guards."In a legal sense, these people were innocent. People could spend years waiting for their 'day in court'.
Some of Mary's badges. Photo by Alex Brook Lynn.
By the time Mary left, she was suffering from something called secondary trauma. "I always thought, 'What is secondary trauma compared to the primary trauma?'" But as time went on, Mary could hardly bear to hear of more horror. Her book opens with a scene in the Bing where she is trying to determine whether a young man who is banging his head against a wall is really in danger of killing himself or not. She was responsible for observing the suicidal inmates and figuring out who to pull out of solidary confinement and who to leave in. Mary's job was "to go to these cell doors where people were covered in feces, babbling incoherently, or standing and banging their heads," to ascertain how severe their psychosis had become. According to Mary, "If [the inmates] had no mental issues beforehand, [the Bing] would induce it."If [the inmates] had no mental issues beforehand, [solitary confinement] would induce it.
The population at Rikers has gone down since Mary left. But reports of abuses have become frequent news items: a "fight club" where guards made inmates battle each other for sport, stories of sexual abuse, and the ill treatment of transgender and juvenile detainees. Now, all of a sudden, New York cares. The heavily reported deaths of Andy Henriquez and Jerome Murdough—who both died due to lack of medical attention in solitary confinement—along with the suicide of Kalief Browder have stirred city denizens into action. In addition, Mayor De Blasio has vowed to clean up Rikers, unveiling a plan to allow low-level, nonviolent offenders to be placed under "supervised release," rather than to be jailed if they can't afford bail.It has been fifteen years since Mary resigned from her position at New York's most notorious jail. She has been writing most of those years. "I have bins and bins downstairs of writing that didn't make it into the book." The political climate wasn't right for a book like this in 2000, she says. "Giuliani could do no wrong back then. Publishers didn't think it would sell, and the quality of my manuscript was probably pretty bad." Mary has learned how to tell a story in order to tell this one.Wanting to get as far away from the criminal justice system as possible, Mary works as an administrative assistant. But with Lockdown on Rikers set to come out later this month, Mary will be a strong voice in the current call to put an end to solitary confinement and bail reform in New York City. She has thrown her hat back in the ring, but this time her hands aren't tied.I would say it was torture.