I Was at Rikers While Coronavirus Spread. Getting Out Was Just as Surreal.
Around mid-March, the men in my dorm on Rikers Island were starting to get antsy.
We were all watching the news, hearing reports about coronavirus spreading in New York City. And the jail was getting more restrictive every day.
They stopped letting us go to the law library and the commissary. Instead they’d deliver us the materials we’d ask for and we’d pick up the items we ordered instead of crowding into the waiting room. They’d stopped transfers to upstate prisons. They’d stopped visitation. We couldn’t see our families.
People started to wonder how long this would last. But nobody had an answer. Officers would just say they didn’t know.
Soon officers started coming in wearing masks and face shields. I didn’t know if it was to protect them from us or us from them.
In my dorm we’d started sleeping head-to-toe. Imagine a big
