Fay Owens

[Content warning: Graphic sexual assault, solitary confinement]

Fay Owens was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She had been incarcerated on Rikers 23 times, and says going over the bridge to Rikers Island "smells like death." Placed in solitary confinement on five instances, Owens was sexually assaulted by corrections officers each time, both women and men, "in the most brutal way they could think of." She illustrates what romantic, sexual, and platonic relationships with other incarcerated women looked like at Rosie's, describing a system of "rules and standards and classes and divisions and mess." Owens thinks there will "always be a Rikers" without education for corrections officers, and feels skeptical that this structure won't change in new borough-based jails, even despite coverage of the conditions on Rikers Island. (Summary written
by: Carson Stachura)