Mr. Busgith has done several stretches in isolation during his six stays at Rikers, the longest for six months in 2014, when he was 18. He said he had no choice but to fight so he would not be seen as weak. “I don’t want to do time in the box, but eventually, due to the circumstances, I had to.”  The entire time he was being interviewed, an inmate nearby in Cell 11 screamed profanities. Mr. Busgith said he did not hear it anymore. “He do that all the time,” he said. “He’s just killing time.”  Mr. Busgith tries to speed up time. “You take your medication so you just sleep all day,” he said. “You talk with your peers, your colleagues. I’ve been locked up a long time. Lot of colleagues. You’ve got to be crazy to be in a cell 23 hours a day. Some people get locked up for shelter and food. I’m not one of those type people. I got a life outside.”  He has an older brother, Michael, serving time upstate at Southport Correctional Facility, in Pine City, N.Y., a maximum-security prison where all of the inmates are held in solitary. “He in the box right now, too,” Mr. Busgith said. “He’s got to do a year and a half.”  Though Mr. Busgith has never been upstate, he says his brother has told him it is better doing time there than at Rikers.  Mr. Busgith said that at upstate prisons, “you get longer visits” and more recreation time. “You get to do better, you get commissaries better. Everything’s better upstate. It’s open, you in the open. Fresh air. You don’t breathe none of this Rikers Island stuff.”
New York City is struggling to end solitary confinement at its jails for people under 22. Here are interviews with several young men who as of a few weeks ago were in segregation at Rikers Island.