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  • The Atlantic

    The Brutal Reality of Life in America’s Most Notorious Jail

    I’ve been locked up in maximum-security prisons for two decades. My time on Rikers Island was worse.
    by John J. Lennon Jan 23, 2023 5 minutes
    Source: Nina Berman / Redux

    This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here.      

    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.

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