Rikers Island, New York City’s 415-acre jail complex on the East River, houses anywhere from 9,700 to 15,000 people on any given day. A number of high-profile cases — most prominently, that of twenty-two-year-old Kalief Browder, who committed suicide in his mother’s home after spending three years, two in solitary confinement, on Rikers, only to have all his charges dropped — have generated increasing scrutiny that has reached well beyond prison abolition and prisoner rights activists.

Indeed, a public debate, involving activists, racial justice organizations, and public officials has been ignited about whether reforms of the scandal-filled complex are feasible, or whether the entire complex should be shuttered.

Mary E. Buser first stepped foot onto Rikers Island in 1991. An eager graduate student at Columbia University’s School of Social Work, she had high hopes for her year-long internship providing therapeutic services to the women detained at the Rose M. Singer Center, the only women’s facility on the island.