Jenna Mallett

Jenna Mallett grew up in Detroit, Michigan. She arrived in New York City as a 20-year-old in 2013. She served two terms at Rikers, the first in 2019 and the second in 2020. She lived in Rikers' Rose M. Singer Center for female detainees, though she moved around the jail complex several times during her incarceration. Some dorms were calm, and some were rowdy. Mallett was at the jail complex in early 2020 when COVID-19 first swept through the facility. She recalls how people infected with Covid were isolated on the third floor of her dorm. She says that Rikers taught her to be more self-reliant; she left the jail thinking: "don’t worry about nobody else. Worry about your damn self." (Summary written by: Annie Anderson)