For teens at Rikers Island, solitary confinement pushes mental limits

Trey Bundy and Daffodil J. Altan, For teens at Rikers Island, solitary confinement pushes mental limits. The Center for Investigative Reporting, 4 March 2014. This story was produced in collaboration with Medium. “Because of its imposing size and notoriety, many people think Rikers is a prison, but it’s not. It’s a city jail, where on any given day about 85 percent of inmates await the resolution of their cases, according to the New York City Board of Correction. Most of the teenagers there are locked up because they can’t afford bail. In New York, anyone who is 16 or older is considered an adult under state criminal law. Rikers, one of the largest jails in the world, has an adolescent population that can rival the biggest adult jail systems in the country: between 400 and 800 a day.”

[Read more…]