Seeing the horrors happening in Rikers Island jails drove one mental health care worker to leave and become an advocate against inhumane treatment of incarcerated Americans.
Mary Buser’s job as assistant unit chief in the Mental Health Department was to help prisoners recover from psychotic breaks and to decided whether they were malingering to get out of solitary confinement or truly needed help, according to an article by Sherryl Connelly in the New York Daily News.
The article is based on a book about Buser’s experiences called Lockdown on Rikers: Shocking Stories of Abuse and Injustice at New York’s Notorious Jail. The article is called: Former Rikers Island Mental Health Worker Details Experience of Inmates Going Mad, Abuse in New Book..
Buser was from a middle class family in Long Island and earned her graduate degree at Columbia University’s School of Social Work, according to the article.
Then she reported for work on Rikers Island, a world that’s far removed from her upbringing. There, she had to argue with higher ups about whether a man slathered with his own feces needed to be moved from the bing (solitary confinement) to the medical floor.
Her job was difficult because sometimes incarcerated men pulled stunts to get out of the bing. Once moved to the medical floor, some of them would prey on the weak and mentally infirm, going as far as to set a comatose man on fire, according to the article.
She worked in various facilities, including the women’s house, before landing at Otis Bantum Correction Center, which was the Central Punitive Segregation Unit that held the worst violent men. There she had to decide if suicide threats of men imprisoned in solitary for months were real.
One man picked open his skin all over his body leaving only superficial cuts. If she granted him relief from the bing, the other 499 men imprisoned there might try the same ploy. She decided to leave him there, and he tried to hang himself.
She’s seen inmates who have bashed their own heads against the wall, heard reports of guards beating incarcerated men and having sex with incarcerated females.
When she heard herself say to a co-worker about a man who broke his neck trying to commit suicide, “It was just a little bone, not an important bone,” she realized how jaded the job was starting to make her. She ran to her office and cried.
Shortly after that, Buser left her position on Rikers. Then she founded the Samaritans of New York suicide prevention hotline. Additionally, she advocates against the inhumane treatment of incarcerated Americans.
