November 29, 2023 • 54 mins
Dysfunctional, transphobic, dehumanizing. These are just a few ways people we interviewed described Rikers Island. We’ll take a look inside this notorious jail complex, hearing about the conditions firsthand from people who have worked there and been detained behind its bars. It’s not somewhere Layleen should have ended up – failed attempts at reform within the criminal justice system led to a $500 bail which Layleen couldn’t afford. As her first few weeks at Rikers unfolded, the chaos inside the jail took a toll on Layleen.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
After Lives is a production of iHeart Podcasts and The
Outspoken podcast Network in partnership with School of Humans. Just
to heads up, the following episode discusses transphobia, physical violence,
(00:24):
sexual assault, and police violence. Take care while listening. Do
you remember where you were when Orange Is a New
Black premiered back in the sweltering summer of twenty thirteen?
What I do? I was a fresh graduate from the
(00:44):
journalism program at the University of Georgia, stomping the streets
desperate for my first real adult job. The new show
was a respite from my worries, and I streamed episodpisode
after episode, binge watching for the very first time thanks
(01:05):
to a fledgling platform known as Netflix. Set in the
fictionalized minimum security prison in Upstate New York, one headline
called Orange is the New Black, the most important TV
show of the decade, and all the viewers like me
who watched that first season in a single weekend, we're
(01:29):
also witnessing a breakthrough in representation.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
I remember receiving an email from Nick Adams at glad
This is when I was working the La Times, and
he just wanted to let me know about this new
show that he thought would be pivotal right in the
conversation about diversity on screen.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Remember pop culture critic of our times, Travel Anderson.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
I am a journalist, a podcaster, and all the rests
of we see each other a black trans journey through
TV and film.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
In Trevell's tome, they credit Orange Is the New Black
with encouraging millions of people to empathize with women of
color behind bars, and it was a show that boasted
having a black trans woman, actress Laverne Cox starring as
a key character. Her role as Sophia Burssette transformed how
(02:28):
a mainstream audience understood the experiences of incarcerated trans women,
and perhaps this representation affected how stories like these are
seen in the real world. Leyalen was dehumanized as she
shuffled through the criminal justice system, passing in front of
(02:49):
courts and judges, correction officers, and even doctors. So many
trans people are treated this way in life and after death.
They become defendants, detainees, statistics issues to be dealt with,
rather than people to be cared for. That's why LaVerne's
(03:12):
role sticks out to me, because it's an attempt to
break that mold. When we humanize a character like Sophia Burssette.
We're being presented with an opportunity to humanize real people too,
people like Leileen. I'm Raquel Willis And this is Afterlives
(03:58):
episode three. All that is on Rikers.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
We live in a world in which the majority of
people still feel like they've never met a trans person,
and so therefore all of the information they're getting about
trans experiences is from TV or in movies.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Seemingly overnight, Laverne Cox became a lightning rod for transgender
representation on TV. Her role and her refreshingly dignified articulation
of her experiences landed her on the cover of a
now iconic Time magazine issue titled The Transgender Tipping Point
(04:41):
in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
And so we got to see a journey with her character.
By the time Orange Is the New Black ended, the
character of Sophia Brissette was released, and she was a
hairdresser in her own salon.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Sophia doesn't robut every trope out there, she does have
main character energy and was portrayed with complexity and nuance
that the world had rarely, if ever scene extended to
a black trans woman on the screen.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
We're not imprisoned anymore.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
This is Sophia and her salon after her release. We
can do whatever we want, b whatever we want. She's
talking to Taylor Shilling aka Piper, the show's protagonists. Yeah,
but you can't pretend that prison just didn't happen.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
No, I'm not going to spend the rest of my
life looking back on it either.
Speaker 5 (05:35):
I did my time.
Speaker 6 (05:37):
I'm looking forward now.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
So we love when we can get complete, long, drawn
out narratives like that, but the reality is we don't
often get that. Our characters are often sidekicks. We're there
for comedic relief, We're there for some sort of maybe
two episode arc. You might think some ten years since
Orange is the New Black premiered, that we'd be seeing
(06:02):
more nuanced portrayals of trans life, and there are some
great examples out there. Shout out to all of the
amazing trans women of color on POS as well as
actors like Brian Michael smith, Isis King, Elliott Page, Bella Ramsay,
and Jamie Clayton, as well as OG's like Alexandra Billings.
(06:26):
But by and large, trans stories and talent remain overlooked
and harmful stereotypes persist. Movies and TV shows are often
priming people to believe that trans lives don't matter. One
way that happens is by associating trans people with violence.
(06:51):
A GLAD Media study found that at least twenty percent
of trans characters were cast as killers or villains in
their storylines on TV between two thousand and two and
twenty twelve. And think about some of the films we
uphold as tent poles of cinema. In the Academy Award
winning film Silence of the Lambs, the film's villain, Buffalo Bill,
(07:16):
is a cross dressing killer. The film makes gender nonconformity
a spectacle and something to be feared.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
For audiences. Over the decades, these characters have been conflated
with real trans experiences.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
I always say that the reason why people today believe
wrongly that trans folks are villains, or that we are
trying to replace women, or that we are trying to
endanger women, is because they first saw it on screen.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
The flip side of the serial killer stereotype is the
trope of the nameless trans victim. GLAD found that at
least forty percent of trans characters on TV screens appear
as victims. Of violence.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
If you watch Law and Order SVU or any of
the Law and Orders, actually, you know, the transperson is
usually not named. They are dead already before the show starts.
Those types of representations and ideas about trans people have
been kind of normalized.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
On our screens.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Folks have kind of internalized a lot of that in
terms of how we.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Move through the particular world. These victims don't have storylines,
and these portrayals don't speak to trans people's full humanity.
Trans characters are turned into objects, simply devices for people
to ignore while the fictional world continues all around them.
(09:02):
And I see that in our real world too. I
saw it as a community organizer even years before Lalen's demise.
Despite numerous deaths and murders, the stories of trans women
rarely drew attention outside of the trans community. They were
ignored and cast aside by police, politicians, media, and the
(09:28):
general public. The fullness of our lives goes unrecognized, and
the tragedy of our deaths is rarely met with justice
or accountability.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
When we're talking about media representations, if all you've ever
seen of trans people on screen is rooted in our
tragedy and our trauma and our death. It becomes a
normalized thing. Then for you, when you hear about another
(10:02):
trans person being killed, you don't even register it because
you've spent your entire life seeing trans people be killed
on TV and in movies.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
These dehumanizing portrayals impact how we, as real life trans people,
see and regard ourselves too. Lalen had dreams of becoming
a VET, but going back to school wasn't something easily
available to her. As she grew up, her hopes seemed
(10:35):
to clash with a harsher reality. Her circumstances as a
trans woman of color, struggling with mental illness, and frequent
incarceration were barriers to her success. That's why the three
sixty view of Sophia's life on Orange is the New
Black was so refreshing. We see her aspirations and her struggles.
(11:01):
Her suffering behind bars can be hard to watch. Some
think it's totally uncalled for, but when I look at
it alongside Leyleen's story, I see some truth in it.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
There's a scene in the show in which they are
denying Sophia her medication.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Oh want to see a doctor and she.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Has to basically fiend some sort of insanity in order
to be taken seriously.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
You can't go to the clinic unless it's an emergency.
Speaker 6 (11:31):
This is an emergency.
Speaker 7 (11:32):
Yeah, well, we don't see it that way.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
And she pops the head off of a bobblehead or
something like that and swallows it to force them to
give her the medical attention that she requires.
Speaker 6 (11:49):
I'd like to report an emergency.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
The denial of routine and emergency healthcare is a major
risk for trans women behind bars, and we know Layleen
didn't get adequate care while in gel otherwise she would
have survived. One survey found that more than a third
of trans people who were taking hormones were prohibited from
(12:14):
doing so while incarcerated.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
And it makes me think about all the stories that
we know and have known for some time about trans
women who have to fight to be affirmed, supported, taken
care of, even as the world or the broader society
might have disposed of them because they're incarcerated.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
There's no need to dramatize the horrors of incarceration. It's
horrific as is. And Leyleen wasn't living in the primetime
prison of Orange is the New Black. She was doing
a bid at one of the most notorious gels in
the country, Riker's Island. Another inmate has died on Riker's Island.
(13:00):
What are so many people dying in New York City jails?
Speaker 4 (13:03):
Rikers Island has been a national embarrassment.
Speaker 8 (13:07):
Advocates say conditions at New York's Rikers Islands are literally killing.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
It is a stain on off.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
Immediate solution right now is deconservation, and the ultimate solution
is closure.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Rikers Island is not just the setting of the story,
It's a character in itself. Rikers is a literal island
in New York's East River, with one bridge and a
single public bus that takes people on and off the island.
It's isolation. It's starkly contrasted with the rest of the city.
(13:49):
Takeoffs and landings from La Guardia Airport across the river
are the view from many cell windows. After New York
City bought the island in the eighteen eighties, the land
was expanded to over four hundred acres and the city
used it for two things, garbage and debtors prisons. Debtors
(14:12):
prisons were essentially workhouses where people were held until they
could pay off money they owed. It was about fifty
years after the city acquired it that Rikers started to
look how it does today.
Speaker 9 (14:26):
Rikers Island is a jail, not a prison.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
This is Tiffany Caban. She's a former public defender who
now represents Rikers, which is a part of her district
on New York City Council.
Speaker 9 (14:39):
Rikers Island is in the district and that people are
dropped there. People live there, but they're caged there.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
In total, there are eight jails on Rikers Island today.
The way Rikers functions now isn't so different from the debtors'
prisons in the eighteen hundreds. That's because most of the
people there are in incarcerated simply because they can't afford bail,
because they can't pay their way out.
Speaker 9 (15:06):
Vast majority of people on Rikers Island they've been accused
of a crime. They have not been convicted of a crime.
They are their pre trial, constitutionally proven to be innocent
right until proven guilty.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
About eighty five percent of people and Rikers are in
this position. They are being held pre trial. That's why
Leileen was there. The rest of the Rikers population is
serving a sentence of less than one year or waiting
to be transferred to a state prison. The thousands of
(15:42):
people incarcerated there are living without access to resources. With
all the mistreatment that goes on, There's one more thing
you need to know about Rikers Rakers.
Speaker 9 (15:56):
Island is the largest mental health provider in our state.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Let that sink in for a second. Rikers Island is
where we are choosing to house mentally ill people. In
New York. Half of the Riker's population has a mental
health diagnosis, and just over fifteen percent have what's called
a serious mental health diagnosis. Lealeen was a part of
(16:27):
this group because she had schizophrenia and for a lot
of reasons, she should have never set foot there.
Speaker 9 (16:36):
Stepping foot on Rikers Island has been widely acknowledged a
potential death sentence in a state where we have outlawed
the death penalty because we consider it cruel and unusual punishment.
Yet people who have not been convicted of a crime
are facing a death sentence the second they are sent
to Rikers Island. There's no doubt about that.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Of course, we want to know what Rikers Island actually
feels like on the inside, so when you come in
to Riker's Island, they do this thing called bullpen therapy.
One of the people we talked about this with was
Kristin Lavelle. They literally put you in a pen. You'll
remember Kristin from our last episode. She directed the Stroll
(17:18):
documentary on HBO and spent much of her twenties in
and out of Rikers. She told us about what happens
when you first arrive as a detainee.
Speaker 7 (17:30):
I would be the only trans woman in a cell
with like one hundred other men, and we're all on
top of each other. I've been attacked numerous times. In
those situations. People are tired because we've been in this cell,
cramped up together for like twelve hours, waiting to be housed.
The situation is dirty, it's discussing. There's no blanket, you're
literally on the floor.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
Sleeping on the floor during bullpen therapy. Is still the
norm as people wait to be housed and the jail,
those conditions remain abysmal. Oh my god, it was terrible.
It was dehumanizing. We'll learn more about issues that Leileen
and other trans people have faced that Rikers later in
this episode, but for now, it's important to understand that
(18:16):
Rikers is rife with trans misogyny and transphobia. It's no secret,
especially if you've been part of the Rikers Island community,
how correction officers and inmates feel about trans people. They
made sure to make it very difficult for trans people
to survive in that environment.
Speaker 4 (18:39):
I'm a black, non binary transperson, and almost all of
the people on Rikers that I've worked with that IROSHTQ
were black in.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Trans We also spoke with Robin Robinson, who was a
social worker at Rikers and I'm like, this could be me.
Robin worked in the LGBTQ plus affairs unit that was
formed after Lalen died, but they left just a year later.
Speaker 4 (19:05):
All the systematic oppression that you can think of, that
it's just in this country lives on Rikers Island. You know,
this is the culture of white supremacy. Like I'm just
going to be blunt. There's a systematic racism, systematic homophobia,
and transphobia, sexism, you name it. All that is on records.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
Nearly ninety percent of the city's incarcerated population is black
or Hispanic.
Speaker 4 (19:31):
And there's a culture of defending these systems. Right if
a staff is acting inappropriately, being sexist, homophobic, whatever, staff
will defend that person.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
They will defend each other to death.
Speaker 10 (19:44):
Nobody wanted to admit defeat. It's like this is not working.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Hell Savage worked with Robin and the LGBTQ plus Affairs unit.
Speaker 10 (19:53):
It was so dysfunctional.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
She also struggled and resigned within a year.
Speaker 10 (19:59):
The the sheer dysfunction is mind boggling. And I was,
honestly so many times waiting for a federal takeover because
these people are lost, they do not know what they're doing.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
At Rikers. Dysfunction doesn't simply mean disorganization. It means violence.
It means people are dying. And that was extremely distressing
for Cals and Rotten.
Speaker 10 (20:25):
We would try to bring up this case. It was
falling on deaf ears, and then another person would die,
and then another person, and then another person.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
There's a reason people say there's a humanitarian crisis at Rikers.
Speaker 10 (20:39):
And we had one individual, a gay man that hung himself,
died by suicide, and when the corrections officers showed up,
their protocol was to pepper spray, so they were spraying
a dead man that was hanging.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
That too was met with silence. She heard staff talk
about it. Just one time.
Speaker 10 (21:05):
I heard one individual like Jesus is like motherfucker had
to like kill himself because they were frustrated with the
people that were trying to find out what happened. It
was just to this point where people were dehumanized, like
completely dehumanized.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
This is where Layleen will end up. It's where she'll die.
After the break, we find out why Layleen was sent
to Rikers in the first place. Welcome back to afterlife.
(21:51):
With all these conditions at Rikers now so vividly in
our minds, I wanted to know how Layleen ended up here. Well,
it started. In August of twenty seventeen, Lealen was arrested
in a sex work sting by undercover NYPD officers. She
(22:11):
was charged with prostitution and possession of a controlled substance.
During her arrest, an officer allegedly found a pipe in
her pocket which contained crack cocaine. These charges were both misdemeanors.
Because her case stemmed from a sex work arrest, she
(22:32):
was sent to Manhattan's Human Trafficking Intervention Court.
Speaker 11 (22:37):
So Human Trafficking Intervention Courts or htics in New York City.
They're specialized courts that were created in twenty thirteen.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Rachel Swanner is the research director at the Center for
Justice Innovation.
Speaker 11 (22:50):
They're located in each of the city's five boroughs.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
As part of a study she conducted on New York
sex trade, she also researched these courts, which focused on
prostitution related arrests.
Speaker 11 (23:02):
So these courts were created to mitigate some of the
harm that trafficking victims experience going through the criminal legal process.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Instead of going to GEL, people who go through these
courts are referred to court programs and nonprofits that offer
things like yoga and psychotherapy. On a first offense, there's
a requirement of completing five of these sessions. But Rachel
says there are flaws to this approach.
Speaker 11 (23:31):
Namely, many of those who met that definition of trafficking
did not apply the term to themselves or their own experiences.
They didn't consider themselves sex trafficking victims, and this suggests
that while sex trafficking may be a legal concept that's
useful to prosecutors and advocates and politicians trying to curtail it,
(23:52):
it didn't have as much currency as a meaningful identity category.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Sex work is just not understood by these systems. They
treat sex work as a problem to solve, not as
a means to survival or in some situations, just the
job that some people actively choose. And the quote unquote
solutions these courts put in place just aren't sufficient.
Speaker 11 (24:20):
A lot of these issues that are driving them into
the sex trade are structural poverty, houselessness, and you don't
solve those issues with five social service sessions.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
But Layleen didn't complete herfessions.
Speaker 8 (24:35):
Laileen not doing disservices? Are sex workers not doing disservices
is common?
Speaker 1 (24:40):
This is Jared Trueio. He's an associate professor at CUNY
School of Law. When we interviewed him, he was also
the policy council for the New York Civil Liberties Union.
He knows there are good reasons why people like Layleen
don't fulfill court requirements like this.
Speaker 8 (25:01):
It's common because oftentimes the reason that people are doing,
especially street based sex work, is because they're living at
the margins, because they have a lack of access to funds,
because they have a lack of access to time, because
they're worried about interacting.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
With the system. Because the systems that they've interacted.
Speaker 8 (25:20):
With, whether they be foster care or the pedal system
are incredibly transphobic, to the point of being dangerous to
their ability to continue breathing over time.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
In addition to not completing sessions, Layleen stopped showing up
the court entirely and things got more complicated for her.
Fast forward to twenty nineteen, Layleen was arrested again, and
what happened is really unclear.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
We only have very basic information.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
This is the lawyer who sued the city after she died.
Speaker 12 (25:56):
David shanas I think it was an unlicensed tach driver
who accused Leyleen of assault, consisting of biting him on
the lip.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
David says he and the family always had a lot
of questions about that.
Speaker 12 (26:11):
Because that is a very strange way to assault a person.
It almost seems more consistent with an unlicensed taxi driver
who is trying to perhaps exact a form of payment
that the rider was not willing to give.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
And basically David thinks the driver was forcing himself on her.
She didn't like that, so she bit him.
Speaker 12 (26:36):
It's really speculation, but there were always major questions about
the assault charge, and in any case, it was not
a serious charge that had bail said on it, and
that should have kept her in jail.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
The judge set a one dollar bill for the taxi arrest,
and it almost looked like Leyleen would go free. But
when the judge saw her legal history, missed court dates,
avoiding mandated sessions, that's when everything went south. This judge
wasn't part of the Human Trafficking Intervention Court, but they
(27:13):
were supposed to adhere to the court's policies, which should
have prohibited Leyleen from going to jail. Despite this, the
judge still decided to set bail for the sex work arrest.
And she couldn't pay.
Speaker 9 (27:32):
Five hundred dollars bail without a doubt, that was her
on ramp to Riker's Island. Five hundred dollars bail. She
could not buy her freedom, and so instead she was
tortured and killed.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
That's council Member Tiffany Caban again.
Speaker 9 (27:52):
So bail exists for one thing, and one thing only
under the law to ensure somebody returns to court. An
sure that somebody who has been accused and charged with
a crime but is presumed innocent returns to court.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Throughout the proceedings, Tiffany says, at its core, Bell is
a wealth based system.
Speaker 9 (28:14):
It creates two systems of justice for people, one for
the poor and one for the wealthy.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
She says, there are people who can afford to pay
bell and fight their case from home, and they are
those like Leyleen, who have not been convicted of a
crime but have to await their court proceedings from Rikers.
This started to change in twenty fifteen, Mayor Bill de
Blasio reformed bell policy for the city and this was
(28:42):
a big deal for reducing the Riker's population.
Speaker 9 (28:47):
And the only way to really reduce the violence on
Rikers Island is to get people off of that island.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
This created some momentum, and in twenty eighteen, the district
attorneys in Manhattan and Brooklyn agreed to not seek bell
for most non felony cases. In twenty nineteen, New York
State passed the law limiting bill, but it didn't go
into effect in time to help Leyleen.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
What's tragic to me about the bail.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Situation, David Shaness again.
Speaker 12 (29:20):
Is this case happened right after a huge conversation in
New York State about problems with the bail laws.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
And between the DA's decision in Manhattan and the policy
of the Human Trafficking Intervention court. It's heartbreaking that Layleen's
bell was still set.
Speaker 12 (29:40):
Why they sought and got bail set on Lalen's case
is a question certainly nobody ever answered for me, and
it's a question I never stopped asking. But I don't
think many people wanted to have that conversation.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Maybe without that five hundred dollars bill, Layleen would be
alive right now. My name is Kate McMahon. My pronounce
are she her? Kate McMahon investigated Lealeen's death and sees
Bell reform as a part of her legacy.
Speaker 5 (30:14):
I think the story that her death tells about bail,
particularly at a time where Bill reformists under attack.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
Kate says, today they're trying to roll back the gains
made by Bell reform. The twenty nineteen law took bell
off the table for a lot of cases. This was
a big win. But as soon as that law was
signed by the governor, backlash hit hard. Legislators have been
rolling back the law ever since.
Speaker 5 (30:43):
And so I think her memory really serves as an
important kind of guide for some of these battles that
we're still fighting to reform.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
The system that's so.
Speaker 5 (30:53):
Broken and so dangerous and so violent and dehumanizing.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
It's important to acknowledge that the system Laileen was caught
in worked exactly as it's designed. It dehumanized her, It
didn't consider the circumstances of her life. It punished her
for being poor, and it cost her her life. We'll
(31:19):
be right back, Welcome back to afterlife. Layleen's story with
(31:43):
the Carthural system is a long list of what ifs
and should have but she ends up going to Rikers.
It was April of twenty nineteen. After being unable to
post bail, she was imediately transferred to the custody of
the Department of Correction or the DC. This department runs Rikers.
(32:10):
From here, Layleena is busted across the bridge onto the island,
where she would spend the last seven weeks of her life.
Speaker 13 (32:19):
She always made sure she checked in with me, always
made sure she called, and she always has a story
to tell.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Meanwhile, her family was totally in the dark. She wasn't
calling it. This is her sister, Melania Brown.
Speaker 13 (32:35):
Now we know that she suffering from mental health issues.
She suffering from seizures.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
She says. Eventually, Layleen did call her mom while she
was incarcerated but didn't want her to come visit. She
wouldn't tell mom where she was at. She wouldn't say.
Speaker 13 (32:51):
Mom will always act and Leileen will always be like, WHOA,
It's a horrible place and I don't want you coming here.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
Leyleen was being held at the women's jail at Rikers
called the Rose M. Singer Center. In her first two days,
Leyleen went through many intake processes. She had medical and
mental health screenings, and she made the doc aware that
she had a seizure disorder. From here, she was moved
(33:22):
to the transgender housing unit.
Speaker 4 (33:24):
This transgender housing unit was created so that.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
That's Robin Robinson again who says this unit was supposed
to be a safe space for her, and for good reason.
Speaker 4 (33:35):
Trans folks are at a higher risk of being sexually
assaulted and physically assaulted, and that's what we were seeing
a lot.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
One study estimated that more than a third of incarcerated
trans people had been sexually assaulted while they were behind bars.
That is about eight times higher than the general prison population.
That risk of violence is why the transgender housing unit exists,
(34:06):
But advocating for trans folks at Rikers to be housed
there to begin with is often a hurdle.
Speaker 4 (34:13):
Perfect example, there was this personal custody who needed to
get into safer housing because she was a victim of rape.
And I just remember in the phone meeting I had
with the staff to advocate for her, they were saying
that she's aggressive, she's going to try and have sex
with the women me on the call, and like fit
(34:36):
the other folks being transphobic. There's no way that I'm
going to get through these people, and then they're going
to get denied, and then what's going to end up
happening is that they're going to stay in the facility.
They were just experienced the rape, it may happen again,
or something worse can happen to them, which is a
physical assault, dying, et cetera.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
It's really hard to hear that this is a reality,
Robin Fa And this was a reality for Kristin Lavelle too.
She was denied safety because of stereotypes.
Speaker 7 (35:09):
Nine times out of ten, you're probably the only trans
girl and a dorm filled with guys. Threats of violence
were constant and there was no protection. It's dehumanizing then,
like when you're trying to shower, guys are going off
because you're naked or because you're trans.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
She recalls one event where she was grabbed from behind.
Speaker 7 (35:34):
He snatched me up and he choked me out and
threw me down the stairs. I had to get thirteen
stitches in my head. When I went to go seek help,
the CEOs didn't respond. They didn't do anything, you know
what I mean. It was like, oh, well, you're lucky
you're not dead, and that's it.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
Kristin wasn't house correctly, but when Tabitha Gonzales was in Rikers,
she was. And even so, there's no avoiding this violently
and trans misogynistic culture.
Speaker 14 (36:11):
When I was are we at the they called it
homosexual house, homo house, especial housing. Later on they would
call it you know, but wherever you went like you
were there and the officers weren't friendly. They would make
fun of you walking down the hallway. They make you
feel like you're subhuman.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
Tabitha and Leyleen were housed the same way at different times.
They both lived in the transgender housing unit, and while
the unit offers some safety, it doesn't mean things were easy.
Tabitha has thought about what life must have been like
for Leileen while she was there.
Speaker 14 (36:48):
I can almost imagine how it felt for her to
be locked down and now you in this place where
you're being penalized for still being you.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
There's not a lot documented about Layleen's early days living
in the transgender housing unit. We do know that two
weeks after Liyleen arrived at Rikers on April thirtieth, she
had a seizure in her dorm in the middle of
the night. Then a few days later she had an
interpersonal conflict with another inmate in her dorm.
Speaker 5 (37:20):
Within those units at the time, there was quite a
lot of conflict. In the interviews they did, some of
that was explained to me as a lot of people
who wind up in those units know each other from
various different communities.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
This is Kate McMahon agan. She investigated Layleen's death for
an oversight organization called the Board of Correction. Conflict can
break out easily in any jail, but Kate's saying that
there's a specific context for understanding issues in the transgender
housing unit.
Speaker 5 (37:54):
The layers of conflict are complicated in a different way
maybe than in an the dorm in general population, and
for that reason, maybe can't be managed the same way,
and conflict can't be managed the same way.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
As a result of Layleen's conflict, she moved to the
second of two transgender housing dorms. But Kate doesn't think
that moving people around is the best solution because there
are only so many dorms that are safe for trans
people to live in at rikers, so.
Speaker 5 (38:27):
In and of itself, there's not enough resources and options
to house people.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
Layleen's assignment to a new dorm it's the first of
several housing changes that she will undergo. It basically kicks
off a process of elimination of where to place her.
It's the start of a lot of instability. Two days
after she arrived in her new dorm, she had another seizure.
(38:58):
That's on May fourth. Then on May sixth, during a
visit to the house clinic, Layleen ran into someone from
her original transgender housing dorm. They had an altercation. One
report written after Layleen's death says, according to the doc
(39:20):
Inmate Fight Tracking database, she struck an inmate in the
face without provocation and the two engaged in a physical altercation.
Both inmates sustained scratches that did not require additional medical attention.
This is the information recorded by correction officers, but it's
(39:42):
reasonable to have some doubt about the doc's records. We've
learned from our research and interviews that you can't necessarily
take the doocne at its word.
Speaker 10 (39:56):
I honestly wouldn't trust all documentation.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
Here's former Rikers social worker Kel Savage again, so.
Speaker 10 (40:04):
Everything's handwritten, everything's on paper. The system that they use
is archaic.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
Kel's worked closely with Robin and they both saw firsthand
how false information makes it into the documentation.
Speaker 4 (40:20):
We had this trans woman who was in general population
and she was physically assaulted by seven women, and it
was just because she was a trans woman. She'd even
fight back. We had video that showed how it started,
and officers tried to blame the trans woman, saying that
she started it. The officers blatantly lied.
Speaker 10 (40:43):
Some of that was just carelessness, honestly. Some of it
was CEO's being pushed to the point of acting irrationally
and not being reprimanded for inhumane treatment. Honestly, yes, CEOs
can like either rely omit information forget information. I would
(41:06):
trust no documentation at Rikers none.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
And look, it's possible that Layleen started that fight, that
it happened exactly like the DC said it did because
we know that Rikers is a really violent place. Fights
are common and triggers abound, especially for trans people. The
CEOs will pick fights with you. The amytal pick fights
(41:33):
with you. We asked Kristen Leval about this.
Speaker 7 (41:36):
I'm not trying to come in here every five minutes
defending my existence, you know what I mean, Like I
am trying to go home, you know, Like I'm not
trying to sit up here and collect tickets to be
fighting with people.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
Layleen was charged with violating the rules because of her fight,
and on May fourteenth, almost a month after she arrived
at Rikers, Layleen had a disciplinary hearing. Her punishment was
twenty days in punitive segregation better known as solitary confinement.
(42:11):
But a punishment like this doesn't happen right away at Rikers.
The sentence doesn't actually specify when it needs to be served.
That depends on a lot of things, including how many
solitary confinement cells are available. So Layleen goes back to
(42:34):
her dorm in the transgender housing unit, and this is
when we begin to see in the records that Layleen's
mental health is suffering. After her hearing, she got into
another fight with someone back in her dorm. An officer
decided to refer Layleen to mental health services. They said
(42:57):
on the referral form that Layleen was showing radical changes
in behavior. I think back to that scene in Orange
is the New Black, where Sophia Bursette is demanding medical attention.
Speaker 3 (43:12):
I'd like to report an emergency.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
She goes as far as swallowing a babblehead, and that
was an intentional cry for help. Leyleen's situation likely was not,
but I wonder how bad things had to get before
Layleen was given the care she deserved. After her last fight,
(43:38):
Layleen was able to speak with a counselor. Then a
clinician recommended that she be returned to her housing unit,
but she wasn't. Instead, DOC transfers her somewhere New somewhere
called Transgender Housing Unit, New Admissions. It's a bit of
(43:59):
a mouth and it turns out it's not an official
housing area. It's basically off the grid and because of that,
it's not subject to proper supervision. When Kate McMahon was
investigating Leileen's death, even she had a hard time figuring
(44:21):
out where and what this housing area was.
Speaker 5 (44:25):
It was an area that was supposed to be temporary,
but part of our investigation was just really trying to
figure out what is this unit, How did these kind
of new admissions units function, What if any, are the
written policies around these units, of which there weren't any.
Speaker 1 (44:43):
This unit just popped up out of nowhere and was
totally lawless, and somehow this is a normal thing that
happens at Rikers.
Speaker 5 (44:53):
At the Border Correction is doing oversight. That was a
constant sort of whack a mole. We have monitors who
go into the shells every day and would routinely find
these new housing areas that we weren't otherwise aware of,
but for the fact we happened to walk into them.
That's sort of been an issue for oversight for a
(45:14):
long time, is how to really regulate these units that
just sort of pop up that may or may not
ensure that people have access to the minimum standards that
they're entitled to.
Speaker 1 (45:26):
On May fifteenth, a day after her mental health visit,
Layleen woke up in this housing unit, but she didn't
leave herself for breakfast or any other services. She did
come out when it was time to take medication, but
refused to take it. According to the Board of Corrections report.
(45:47):
Leyleen quote began rolling around on the floor in the
day room, talking to herself and growling.
Speaker 5 (45:55):
I think it's otherwise clear that she was decompensating quite
a bit as soon as she got to jail.
Speaker 1 (46:04):
This term decompensating refers to the process of a person
losing their ability to regulate their mental health. Leyleen had
been in Rikers for about a month, and for the
second day in a row, an officer flagged her mental
state on a referral form. The officer circled the following
(46:28):
showing radical changes in behavior, expressing a desire to commit
suicide and or attempting suicide, Frequent displays of shouting, crying
and or screaming, having hallucinations delusions, seeing objects or hearing
voices that do not exist, showing poor personal hygiene or appearance,
(46:51):
doesn't shave, wash or change clothes, etc. Being alarmed, frightened,
or in a state of pain, and unusual action or
behavior that should be brought to the attention of the
mental health staff. The officer also wrote in inmate randomly crying, shouting.
Speaker 6 (47:16):
There are a couple of foundational mental health challenges for
everybody inherent in mass incarceration.
Speaker 1 (47:26):
This is doctor Homer Venters. He has worked in healthcare
at the city's jails for nearly a decade and served
as the chief medical officer for NYC jails, including Rikers
up until twenty seventeen, just a couple years before Lalen
was there. He's also the author of Life and Death
(47:46):
in Rikers Island, which is an indictment of the dangers
he witnessed there.
Speaker 6 (47:52):
People's mental health gets worse when they're put into violent,
chaotic settings, and jails especially are very violent and chaotic settings.
The stimulus, the thing that's making things worse is the
setting itself.
Speaker 1 (48:06):
In the doc's incident reporting system, there's a log book
entry from around the same time that says Layleen approached
an officer with aggressive hand gestures toward the facial area.
The officer extended her arm and ordered Layleen to stop,
but Layleen moved forward and struck the officer on her forearm. Afterwards,
(48:32):
Layleen quote was found sitting on the floor of the cell,
refusing to engage with staff. She was transferred by mental
health staff to Elmhurst Hospital, where she would spend nine days.
Speaker 6 (48:46):
Patients may go to the hospital for treatments or assessment
that can't happen in the jail infirmary, and so at
any given time, there may be two, there may be
twenty people who are in Elmhurst, or they may even
be at other hospitals, and then that room is going
to have, if it's not a locked ward, they're going
(49:07):
to have two correction officers there for the whole time
probably that they're hospitalized.
Speaker 1 (49:16):
Laleen was in the psychiatric prison ward at the hospital
and when she returns to Rikers, she's in a vulnerable position.
She has already been moved into three different housing units
and been in the hospital. She's fully entrenched in this
chaos and it's affecting her. Like doctor Vinter said, Rikers,
(49:40):
itself exacerbates mental illness.
Speaker 6 (49:43):
When people come into a jail or a prison, they're
more likely to experience abuse, neglect, jail instributable.
Speaker 1 (49:51):
Death, the criminalization of sex work, and the courts and
the bell system. That's all led Leyleen to this point.
That's what put her here, and transphobia is all around her.
Cops and judges and correction officers, they've all been exposed
(50:16):
to narratives that dehumanize trans women. They've all seen movies
and TV shows that show us solely as a stereotype. Hell,
they're the stars of those shows, the heroes. Even trans
people have been depicted as unworthy of being treated equally
(50:36):
and as people who it's okay to cast away behind bars.
Speaker 6 (50:42):
They're more likely to have those things happen to them
if they fall into these groups. That security staff and
even health staff view is nonconforming. So if somebody's LGBTQUI,
if somebody has a serious mental health problem, if somebody
speaks up for them, there are all sorts of elements
(51:02):
to a person's identity that can elicit worse treatment or
worse care behind bars.
Speaker 1 (51:11):
Lalen ticked many of these boxes. She was even accused
of assaulting an officer. Whether or not she was in
the throes of a mental health crisis at the time,
the people entrusted with keeping her alive may no longer
be all that invested in doing so.
Speaker 6 (51:29):
I haven't reviewed any of the records in her case,
but it's certainly been my experience that many of the
jail attributable deaths that I investigate involve people that the
security service had decided was a problem or was causing
them headaches or shouldn't be trusted, and that is a problem.
Speaker 1 (51:52):
Layleen's death is what doctor Vincors calls jail attributable. She
should have. It's Riker's fault that she isn't alive. That's
next time on Afterlives.
Speaker 12 (52:10):
A medical doctor was asked, can this person be put
in solitary in light of their seizure disorder?
Speaker 3 (52:18):
And they answered yes.
Speaker 12 (52:20):
And to me, if anyone were going to be held
criminally accountable for Laylan's death, that's the direction I would
have looked.
Speaker 11 (52:31):
I remember the ould SVANGI man Hard and I went
and looked up and I don't think she says her
any movement, but she was just like, oh, I kept walking.
Speaker 5 (52:41):
That's forty one minutes where no one's observing her, which
is in violation of the segregation unit policy.
Speaker 4 (52:47):
Had that been the case, honestly think she would still
be alive.
Speaker 1 (53:04):
Thank you so much for listening to Afterlives. You can
find this episode and future ones on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Please leave
us a rating and review to let us know what
you think. After Lives is a production of iHeart Podcasts.
(53:24):
And The Outspoken Podcast Network in partnership with the School
of Humans. I'm your host and creator Raquel Willis. Dylan
Hoyer is our senior producer and scriptwriter. Our associate producer
is Joey pat Sound design and engineering by Jess Krinchich,
(53:45):
story editing by Aaron Edwards and Julia Furlan, fact checking
by Savannah Hugile. Our show art is by Makai Baldwin.
Score composed by Wisely Array. Our production manager is Daisy Church.
Executive producers include me, Raquel Willis, and Jay Brunson from
(54:09):
The Outspoken Podcast Network, Michael Alder June and Noel Brown
from iHeart Podcasts, Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr and Elsie Crowley
from School of Humans and The Cats Company. School of Humans,
After Lives is a production of iHeart Podcasts and The
Outspoken podcast Network in partnership with School of Humans. Just
to heads up, the following episode discusses transphobia, physical violence,
(00:24):
sexual assault, and police violence. Take care while listening. Do
you remember where you were when Orange Is a New
Black premiered back in the sweltering summer of twenty thirteen?
What I do? I was a fresh graduate from the
(00:44):
journalism program at the University of Georgia, stomping the streets
desperate for my first real adult job. The new show
was a respite from my worries, and I streamed episodpisode
after episode, binge watching for the very first time thanks
(01:05):
to a fledgling platform known as Netflix. Set in the
fictionalized minimum security prison in Upstate New York, one headline
called Orange is the New Black, the most important TV
show of the decade, and all the viewers like me
who watched that first season in a single weekend, we're
(01:29):
also witnessing a breakthrough in representation.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
I remember receiving an email from Nick Adams at glad
This is when I was working the La Times, and
he just wanted to let me know about this new
show that he thought would be pivotal right in the
conversation about diversity on screen.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Remember pop culture critic of our times, Travel Anderson.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
I am a journalist, a podcaster, and all the rests
of we see each other a black trans journey through
TV and film.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
In Trevell's tome, they credit Orange Is the New Black
with encouraging millions of people to empathize with women of
color behind bars, and it was a show that boasted
having a black trans woman, actress Laverne Cox starring as
a key character. Her role as Sophia Burssette transformed how
(02:28):
a mainstream audience understood the experiences of incarcerated trans women,
and perhaps this representation affected how stories like these are
seen in the real world. Leyalen was dehumanized as she
shuffled through the criminal justice system, passing in front of
(02:49):
courts and judges, correction officers, and even doctors. So many
trans people are treated this way in life and after death.
They become defendants, detainees, statistics issues to be dealt with,
rather than people to be cared for. That's why LaVerne's
(03:12):
role sticks out to me, because it's an attempt to
break that mold. When we humanize a character like Sophia Burssette.
We're being presented with an opportunity to humanize real people too,
people like Leileen. I'm Raquel Willis And this is Afterlives
(03:58):
episode three. All that is on Rikers.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
We live in a world in which the majority of
people still feel like they've never met a trans person,
and so therefore all of the information they're getting about
trans experiences is from TV or in movies.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Seemingly overnight, Laverne Cox became a lightning rod for transgender
representation on TV. Her role and her refreshingly dignified articulation
of her experiences landed her on the cover of a
now iconic Time magazine issue titled The Transgender Tipping Point
(04:41):
in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
And so we got to see a journey with her character.
By the time Orange Is the New Black ended, the
character of Sophia Brissette was released, and she was a
hairdresser in her own salon.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Sophia doesn't robut every trope out there, she does have
main character energy and was portrayed with complexity and nuance
that the world had rarely, if ever scene extended to
a black trans woman on the screen.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
We're not imprisoned anymore.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
This is Sophia and her salon after her release. We
can do whatever we want, b whatever we want. She's
talking to Taylor Shilling aka Piper, the show's protagonists. Yeah,
but you can't pretend that prison just didn't happen.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
No, I'm not going to spend the rest of my
life looking back on it either.
Speaker 5 (05:35):
I did my time.
Speaker 6 (05:37):
I'm looking forward now.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
So we love when we can get complete, long, drawn
out narratives like that, but the reality is we don't
often get that. Our characters are often sidekicks. We're there
for comedic relief, We're there for some sort of maybe
two episode arc. You might think some ten years since
Orange is the New Black premiered, that we'd be seeing
(06:02):
more nuanced portrayals of trans life, and there are some
great examples out there. Shout out to all of the
amazing trans women of color on POS as well as
actors like Brian Michael smith, Isis King, Elliott Page, Bella Ramsay,
and Jamie Clayton, as well as OG's like Alexandra Billings.
(06:26):
But by and large, trans stories and talent remain overlooked
and harmful stereotypes persist. Movies and TV shows are often
priming people to believe that trans lives don't matter. One
way that happens is by associating trans people with violence.
(06:51):
A GLAD Media study found that at least twenty percent
of trans characters were cast as killers or villains in
their storylines on TV between two thousand and two and
twenty twelve. And think about some of the films we
uphold as tent poles of cinema. In the Academy Award
winning film Silence of the Lambs, the film's villain, Buffalo Bill,
(07:16):
is a cross dressing killer. The film makes gender nonconformity
a spectacle and something to be feared.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
For audiences. Over the decades, these characters have been conflated
with real trans experiences.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
I always say that the reason why people today believe
wrongly that trans folks are villains, or that we are
trying to replace women, or that we are trying to
endanger women, is because they first saw it on screen.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
The flip side of the serial killer stereotype is the
trope of the nameless trans victim. GLAD found that at
least forty percent of trans characters on TV screens appear
as victims. Of violence.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
If you watch Law and Order SVU or any of
the Law and Orders, actually, you know, the transperson is
usually not named. They are dead already before the show starts.
Those types of representations and ideas about trans people have
been kind of normalized.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
On our screens.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Folks have kind of internalized a lot of that in
terms of how we.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Move through the particular world. These victims don't have storylines,
and these portrayals don't speak to trans people's full humanity.
Trans characters are turned into objects, simply devices for people
to ignore while the fictional world continues all around them.
(09:02):
And I see that in our real world too. I
saw it as a community organizer even years before Lalen's demise.
Despite numerous deaths and murders, the stories of trans women
rarely drew attention outside of the trans community. They were
ignored and cast aside by police, politicians, media, and the
(09:28):
general public. The fullness of our lives goes unrecognized, and
the tragedy of our deaths is rarely met with justice
or accountability.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
When we're talking about media representations, if all you've ever
seen of trans people on screen is rooted in our
tragedy and our trauma and our death. It becomes a
normalized thing. Then for you, when you hear about another
(10:02):
trans person being killed, you don't even register it because
you've spent your entire life seeing trans people be killed
on TV and in movies.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
These dehumanizing portrayals impact how we, as real life trans people,
see and regard ourselves too. Lalen had dreams of becoming
a VET, but going back to school wasn't something easily
available to her. As she grew up, her hopes seemed
(10:35):
to clash with a harsher reality. Her circumstances as a
trans woman of color, struggling with mental illness, and frequent
incarceration were barriers to her success. That's why the three
sixty view of Sophia's life on Orange is the New
Black was so refreshing. We see her aspirations and her struggles.
(11:01):
Her suffering behind bars can be hard to watch. Some
think it's totally uncalled for, but when I look at
it alongside Leyleen's story, I see some truth in it.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
There's a scene in the show in which they are
denying Sophia her medication.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Oh want to see a doctor and she.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Has to basically fiend some sort of insanity in order
to be taken seriously.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
You can't go to the clinic unless it's an emergency.
Speaker 6 (11:31):
This is an emergency.
Speaker 7 (11:32):
Yeah, well, we don't see it that way.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
And she pops the head off of a bobblehead or
something like that and swallows it to force them to
give her the medical attention that she requires.
Speaker 6 (11:49):
I'd like to report an emergency.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
The denial of routine and emergency healthcare is a major
risk for trans women behind bars, and we know Layleen
didn't get adequate care while in gel otherwise she would
have survived. One survey found that more than a third
of trans people who were taking hormones were prohibited from
(12:14):
doing so while incarcerated.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
And it makes me think about all the stories that
we know and have known for some time about trans
women who have to fight to be affirmed, supported, taken
care of, even as the world or the broader society
might have disposed of them because they're incarcerated.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
There's no need to dramatize the horrors of incarceration. It's
horrific as is. And Leyleen wasn't living in the primetime
prison of Orange is the New Black. She was doing
a bid at one of the most notorious gels in
the country, Riker's Island. Another inmate has died on Riker's Island.
(13:00):
What are so many people dying in New York City jails?
Speaker 4 (13:03):
Rikers Island has been a national embarrassment.
Speaker 8 (13:07):
Advocates say conditions at New York's Rikers Islands are literally killing.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
It is a stain on off.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
Immediate solution right now is deconservation, and the ultimate solution
is closure.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Rikers Island is not just the setting of the story,
It's a character in itself. Rikers is a literal island
in New York's East River, with one bridge and a
single public bus that takes people on and off the island.
It's isolation. It's starkly contrasted with the rest of the city.
(13:49):
Takeoffs and landings from La Guardia Airport across the river
are the view from many cell windows. After New York
City bought the island in the eighteen eighties, the land
was expanded to over four hundred acres and the city
used it for two things, garbage and debtors prisons. Debtors
(14:12):
prisons were essentially workhouses where people were held until they
could pay off money they owed. It was about fifty
years after the city acquired it that Rikers started to
look how it does today.
Speaker 9 (14:26):
Rikers Island is a jail, not a prison.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
This is Tiffany Caban. She's a former public defender who
now represents Rikers, which is a part of her district
on New York City Council.
Speaker 9 (14:39):
Rikers Island is in the district and that people are
dropped there. People live there, but they're caged there.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
In total, there are eight jails on Rikers Island today.
The way Rikers functions now isn't so different from the debtors'
prisons in the eighteen hundreds. That's because most of the
people there are in incarcerated simply because they can't afford bail,
because they can't pay their way out.
Speaker 9 (15:06):
Vast majority of people on Rikers Island they've been accused
of a crime. They have not been convicted of a crime.
They are their pre trial, constitutionally proven to be innocent
right until proven guilty.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
About eighty five percent of people and Rikers are in
this position. They are being held pre trial. That's why
Leileen was there. The rest of the Rikers population is
serving a sentence of less than one year or waiting
to be transferred to a state prison. The thousands of
(15:42):
people incarcerated there are living without access to resources. With
all the mistreatment that goes on, There's one more thing
you need to know about Rikers Rakers.
Speaker 9 (15:56):
Island is the largest mental health provider in our state.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Let that sink in for a second. Rikers Island is
where we are choosing to house mentally ill people. In
New York. Half of the Riker's population has a mental
health diagnosis, and just over fifteen percent have what's called
a serious mental health diagnosis. Lealeen was a part of
(16:27):
this group because she had schizophrenia and for a lot
of reasons, she should have never set foot there.
Speaker 9 (16:36):
Stepping foot on Rikers Island has been widely acknowledged a
potential death sentence in a state where we have outlawed
the death penalty because we consider it cruel and unusual punishment.
Yet people who have not been convicted of a crime
are facing a death sentence the second they are sent
to Rikers Island. There's no doubt about that.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Of course, we want to know what Rikers Island actually
feels like on the inside, so when you come in
to Riker's Island, they do this thing called bullpen therapy.
One of the people we talked about this with was
Kristin Lavelle. They literally put you in a pen. You'll
remember Kristin from our last episode. She directed the Stroll
(17:18):
documentary on HBO and spent much of her twenties in
and out of Rikers. She told us about what happens
when you first arrive as a detainee.
Speaker 7 (17:30):
I would be the only trans woman in a cell
with like one hundred other men, and we're all on
top of each other. I've been attacked numerous times. In
those situations. People are tired because we've been in this cell,
cramped up together for like twelve hours, waiting to be housed.
The situation is dirty, it's discussing. There's no blanket, you're
literally on the floor.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
Sleeping on the floor during bullpen therapy. Is still the
norm as people wait to be housed and the jail,
those conditions remain abysmal. Oh my god, it was terrible.
It was dehumanizing. We'll learn more about issues that Leileen
and other trans people have faced that Rikers later in
this episode, but for now, it's important to understand that
(18:16):
Rikers is rife with trans misogyny and transphobia. It's no secret,
especially if you've been part of the Rikers Island community,
how correction officers and inmates feel about trans people. They
made sure to make it very difficult for trans people
to survive in that environment.
Speaker 4 (18:39):
I'm a black, non binary transperson, and almost all of
the people on Rikers that I've worked with that IROSHTQ
were black in.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Trans We also spoke with Robin Robinson, who was a
social worker at Rikers and I'm like, this could be me.
Robin worked in the LGBTQ plus affairs unit that was
formed after Lalen died, but they left just a year later.
Speaker 4 (19:05):
All the systematic oppression that you can think of, that
it's just in this country lives on Rikers Island. You know,
this is the culture of white supremacy. Like I'm just
going to be blunt. There's a systematic racism, systematic homophobia,
and transphobia, sexism, you name it. All that is on records.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
Nearly ninety percent of the city's incarcerated population is black
or Hispanic.
Speaker 4 (19:31):
And there's a culture of defending these systems. Right if
a staff is acting inappropriately, being sexist, homophobic, whatever, staff
will defend that person.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
They will defend each other to death.
Speaker 10 (19:44):
Nobody wanted to admit defeat. It's like this is not working.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Hell Savage worked with Robin and the LGBTQ plus Affairs unit.
Speaker 10 (19:53):
It was so dysfunctional.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
She also struggled and resigned within a year.
Speaker 10 (19:59):
The the sheer dysfunction is mind boggling. And I was,
honestly so many times waiting for a federal takeover because
these people are lost, they do not know what they're doing.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
At Rikers. Dysfunction doesn't simply mean disorganization. It means violence.
It means people are dying. And that was extremely distressing
for Cals and Rotten.
Speaker 10 (20:25):
We would try to bring up this case. It was
falling on deaf ears, and then another person would die,
and then another person, and then another person.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
There's a reason people say there's a humanitarian crisis at Rikers.
Speaker 10 (20:39):
And we had one individual, a gay man that hung himself,
died by suicide, and when the corrections officers showed up,
their protocol was to pepper spray, so they were spraying
a dead man that was hanging.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
That too was met with silence. She heard staff talk
about it. Just one time.
Speaker 10 (21:05):
I heard one individual like Jesus is like motherfucker had
to like kill himself because they were frustrated with the
people that were trying to find out what happened. It
was just to this point where people were dehumanized, like
completely dehumanized.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
This is where Layleen will end up. It's where she'll die.
After the break, we find out why Layleen was sent
to Rikers in the first place. Welcome back to afterlife.
(21:51):
With all these conditions at Rikers now so vividly in
our minds, I wanted to know how Layleen ended up here. Well,
it started. In August of twenty seventeen, Lealen was arrested
in a sex work sting by undercover NYPD officers. She
(22:11):
was charged with prostitution and possession of a controlled substance.
During her arrest, an officer allegedly found a pipe in
her pocket which contained crack cocaine. These charges were both misdemeanors.
Because her case stemmed from a sex work arrest, she
(22:32):
was sent to Manhattan's Human Trafficking Intervention Court.
Speaker 11 (22:37):
So Human Trafficking Intervention Courts or htics in New York City.
They're specialized courts that were created in twenty thirteen.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Rachel Swanner is the research director at the Center for
Justice Innovation.
Speaker 11 (22:50):
They're located in each of the city's five boroughs.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
As part of a study she conducted on New York
sex trade, she also researched these courts, which focused on
prostitution related arrests.
Speaker 11 (23:02):
So these courts were created to mitigate some of the
harm that trafficking victims experience going through the criminal legal process.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Instead of going to GEL, people who go through these
courts are referred to court programs and nonprofits that offer
things like yoga and psychotherapy. On a first offense, there's
a requirement of completing five of these sessions. But Rachel
says there are flaws to this approach.
Speaker 11 (23:31):
Namely, many of those who met that definition of trafficking
did not apply the term to themselves or their own experiences.
They didn't consider themselves sex trafficking victims, and this suggests
that while sex trafficking may be a legal concept that's
useful to prosecutors and advocates and politicians trying to curtail it,
(23:52):
it didn't have as much currency as a meaningful identity category.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Sex work is just not understood by these systems. They
treat sex work as a problem to solve, not as
a means to survival or in some situations, just the
job that some people actively choose. And the quote unquote
solutions these courts put in place just aren't sufficient.
Speaker 11 (24:20):
A lot of these issues that are driving them into
the sex trade are structural poverty, houselessness, and you don't
solve those issues with five social service sessions.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
But Layleen didn't complete herfessions.
Speaker 8 (24:35):
Laileen not doing disservices? Are sex workers not doing disservices
is common?
Speaker 1 (24:40):
This is Jared Trueio. He's an associate professor at CUNY
School of Law. When we interviewed him, he was also
the policy council for the New York Civil Liberties Union.
He knows there are good reasons why people like Layleen
don't fulfill court requirements like this.
Speaker 8 (25:01):
It's common because oftentimes the reason that people are doing,
especially street based sex work, is because they're living at
the margins, because they have a lack of access to funds,
because they have a lack of access to time, because
they're worried about interacting.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
With the system. Because the systems that they've interacted.
Speaker 8 (25:20):
With, whether they be foster care or the pedal system
are incredibly transphobic, to the point of being dangerous to
their ability to continue breathing over time.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
In addition to not completing sessions, Layleen stopped showing up
the court entirely and things got more complicated for her.
Fast forward to twenty nineteen, Layleen was arrested again, and
what happened is really unclear.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
We only have very basic information.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
This is the lawyer who sued the city after she died.
Speaker 12 (25:56):
David shanas I think it was an unlicensed tach driver
who accused Leyleen of assault, consisting of biting him on
the lip.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
David says he and the family always had a lot
of questions about that.
Speaker 12 (26:11):
Because that is a very strange way to assault a person.
It almost seems more consistent with an unlicensed taxi driver
who is trying to perhaps exact a form of payment
that the rider was not willing to give.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
And basically David thinks the driver was forcing himself on her.
She didn't like that, so she bit him.
Speaker 12 (26:36):
It's really speculation, but there were always major questions about
the assault charge, and in any case, it was not
a serious charge that had bail said on it, and
that should have kept her in jail.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
The judge set a one dollar bill for the taxi arrest,
and it almost looked like Leyleen would go free. But
when the judge saw her legal history, missed court dates,
avoiding mandated sessions, that's when everything went south. This judge
wasn't part of the Human Trafficking Intervention Court, but they
(27:13):
were supposed to adhere to the court's policies, which should
have prohibited Leyleen from going to jail. Despite this, the
judge still decided to set bail for the sex work arrest.
And she couldn't pay.
Speaker 9 (27:32):
Five hundred dollars bail without a doubt, that was her
on ramp to Riker's Island. Five hundred dollars bail. She
could not buy her freedom, and so instead she was
tortured and killed.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
That's council Member Tiffany Caban again.
Speaker 9 (27:52):
So bail exists for one thing, and one thing only
under the law to ensure somebody returns to court. An
sure that somebody who has been accused and charged with
a crime but is presumed innocent returns to court.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Throughout the proceedings, Tiffany says, at its core, Bell is
a wealth based system.
Speaker 9 (28:14):
It creates two systems of justice for people, one for
the poor and one for the wealthy.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
She says, there are people who can afford to pay
bell and fight their case from home, and they are
those like Leyleen, who have not been convicted of a
crime but have to await their court proceedings from Rikers.
This started to change in twenty fifteen, Mayor Bill de
Blasio reformed bell policy for the city and this was
(28:42):
a big deal for reducing the Riker's population.
Speaker 9 (28:47):
And the only way to really reduce the violence on
Rikers Island is to get people off of that island.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
This created some momentum, and in twenty eighteen, the district
attorneys in Manhattan and Brooklyn agreed to not seek bell
for most non felony cases. In twenty nineteen, New York
State passed the law limiting bill, but it didn't go
into effect in time to help Leyleen.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
What's tragic to me about the bail.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Situation, David Shaness again.
Speaker 12 (29:20):
Is this case happened right after a huge conversation in
New York State about problems with the bail laws.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
And between the DA's decision in Manhattan and the policy
of the Human Trafficking Intervention court. It's heartbreaking that Layleen's
bell was still set.
Speaker 12 (29:40):
Why they sought and got bail set on Lalen's case
is a question certainly nobody ever answered for me, and
it's a question I never stopped asking. But I don't
think many people wanted to have that conversation.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Maybe without that five hundred dollars bill, Layleen would be
alive right now. My name is Kate McMahon. My pronounce
are she her? Kate McMahon investigated Lealeen's death and sees
Bell reform as a part of her legacy.
Speaker 5 (30:14):
I think the story that her death tells about bail,
particularly at a time where Bill reformists under attack.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
Kate says, today they're trying to roll back the gains
made by Bell reform. The twenty nineteen law took bell
off the table for a lot of cases. This was
a big win. But as soon as that law was
signed by the governor, backlash hit hard. Legislators have been
rolling back the law ever since.
Speaker 5 (30:43):
And so I think her memory really serves as an
important kind of guide for some of these battles that
we're still fighting to reform.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
The system that's so.
Speaker 5 (30:53):
Broken and so dangerous and so violent and dehumanizing.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
It's important to acknowledge that the system Laileen was caught
in worked exactly as it's designed. It dehumanized her, It
didn't consider the circumstances of her life. It punished her
for being poor, and it cost her her life. We'll
(31:19):
be right back, Welcome back to afterlife. Layleen's story with
(31:43):
the Carthural system is a long list of what ifs
and should have but she ends up going to Rikers.
It was April of twenty nineteen. After being unable to
post bail, she was imediately transferred to the custody of
the Department of Correction or the DC. This department runs Rikers.
(32:10):
From here, Layleena is busted across the bridge onto the island,
where she would spend the last seven weeks of her life.
Speaker 13 (32:19):
She always made sure she checked in with me, always
made sure she called, and she always has a story
to tell.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Meanwhile, her family was totally in the dark. She wasn't
calling it. This is her sister, Melania Brown.
Speaker 13 (32:35):
Now we know that she suffering from mental health issues.
She suffering from seizures.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
She says. Eventually, Layleen did call her mom while she
was incarcerated but didn't want her to come visit. She
wouldn't tell mom where she was at. She wouldn't say.
Speaker 13 (32:51):
Mom will always act and Leileen will always be like, WHOA,
It's a horrible place and I don't want you coming here.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
Leyleen was being held at the women's jail at Rikers
called the Rose M. Singer Center. In her first two days,
Leyleen went through many intake processes. She had medical and
mental health screenings, and she made the doc aware that
she had a seizure disorder. From here, she was moved
(33:22):
to the transgender housing unit.
Speaker 4 (33:24):
This transgender housing unit was created so that.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
That's Robin Robinson again who says this unit was supposed
to be a safe space for her, and for good reason.
Speaker 4 (33:35):
Trans folks are at a higher risk of being sexually
assaulted and physically assaulted, and that's what we were seeing
a lot.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
One study estimated that more than a third of incarcerated
trans people had been sexually assaulted while they were behind bars.
That is about eight times higher than the general prison population.
That risk of violence is why the transgender housing unit exists,
(34:06):
But advocating for trans folks at Rikers to be housed
there to begin with is often a hurdle.
Speaker 4 (34:13):
Perfect example, there was this personal custody who needed to
get into safer housing because she was a victim of rape.
And I just remember in the phone meeting I had
with the staff to advocate for her, they were saying
that she's aggressive, she's going to try and have sex
with the women me on the call, and like fit
(34:36):
the other folks being transphobic. There's no way that I'm
going to get through these people, and then they're going
to get denied, and then what's going to end up
happening is that they're going to stay in the facility.
They were just experienced the rape, it may happen again,
or something worse can happen to them, which is a
physical assault, dying, et cetera.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
It's really hard to hear that this is a reality,
Robin Fa And this was a reality for Kristin Lavelle too.
She was denied safety because of stereotypes.
Speaker 7 (35:09):
Nine times out of ten, you're probably the only trans
girl and a dorm filled with guys. Threats of violence
were constant and there was no protection. It's dehumanizing then,
like when you're trying to shower, guys are going off
because you're naked or because you're trans.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
She recalls one event where she was grabbed from behind.
Speaker 7 (35:34):
He snatched me up and he choked me out and
threw me down the stairs. I had to get thirteen
stitches in my head. When I went to go seek help,
the CEOs didn't respond. They didn't do anything, you know
what I mean. It was like, oh, well, you're lucky
you're not dead, and that's it.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
Kristin wasn't house correctly, but when Tabitha Gonzales was in Rikers,
she was. And even so, there's no avoiding this violently
and trans misogynistic culture.
Speaker 14 (36:11):
When I was are we at the they called it
homosexual house, homo house, especial housing. Later on they would
call it you know, but wherever you went like you
were there and the officers weren't friendly. They would make
fun of you walking down the hallway. They make you
feel like you're subhuman.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
Tabitha and Leyleen were housed the same way at different times.
They both lived in the transgender housing unit, and while
the unit offers some safety, it doesn't mean things were easy.
Tabitha has thought about what life must have been like
for Leileen while she was there.
Speaker 14 (36:48):
I can almost imagine how it felt for her to
be locked down and now you in this place where
you're being penalized for still being you.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
There's not a lot documented about Layleen's early days living
in the transgender housing unit. We do know that two
weeks after Liyleen arrived at Rikers on April thirtieth, she
had a seizure in her dorm in the middle of
the night. Then a few days later she had an
interpersonal conflict with another inmate in her dorm.
Speaker 5 (37:20):
Within those units at the time, there was quite a
lot of conflict. In the interviews they did, some of
that was explained to me as a lot of people
who wind up in those units know each other from
various different communities.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
This is Kate McMahon agan. She investigated Layleen's death for
an oversight organization called the Board of Correction. Conflict can
break out easily in any jail, but Kate's saying that
there's a specific context for understanding issues in the transgender
housing unit.
Speaker 5 (37:54):
The layers of conflict are complicated in a different way
maybe than in an the dorm in general population, and
for that reason, maybe can't be managed the same way,
and conflict can't be managed the same way.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
As a result of Layleen's conflict, she moved to the
second of two transgender housing dorms. But Kate doesn't think
that moving people around is the best solution because there
are only so many dorms that are safe for trans
people to live in at rikers, so.
Speaker 5 (38:27):
In and of itself, there's not enough resources and options
to house people.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
Layleen's assignment to a new dorm it's the first of
several housing changes that she will undergo. It basically kicks
off a process of elimination of where to place her.
It's the start of a lot of instability. Two days
after she arrived in her new dorm, she had another seizure.
(38:58):
That's on May fourth. Then on May sixth, during a
visit to the house clinic, Layleen ran into someone from
her original transgender housing dorm. They had an altercation. One
report written after Layleen's death says, according to the doc
(39:20):
Inmate Fight Tracking database, she struck an inmate in the
face without provocation and the two engaged in a physical altercation.
Both inmates sustained scratches that did not require additional medical attention.
This is the information recorded by correction officers, but it's
(39:42):
reasonable to have some doubt about the doc's records. We've
learned from our research and interviews that you can't necessarily
take the doocne at its word.
Speaker 10 (39:56):
I honestly wouldn't trust all documentation.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
Here's former Rikers social worker Kel Savage again, so.
Speaker 10 (40:04):
Everything's handwritten, everything's on paper. The system that they use
is archaic.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
Kel's worked closely with Robin and they both saw firsthand
how false information makes it into the documentation.
Speaker 4 (40:20):
We had this trans woman who was in general population
and she was physically assaulted by seven women, and it
was just because she was a trans woman. She'd even
fight back. We had video that showed how it started,
and officers tried to blame the trans woman, saying that
she started it. The officers blatantly lied.
Speaker 10 (40:43):
Some of that was just carelessness, honestly. Some of it
was CEO's being pushed to the point of acting irrationally
and not being reprimanded for inhumane treatment. Honestly, yes, CEOs
can like either rely omit information forget information. I would
(41:06):
trust no documentation at Rikers none.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
And look, it's possible that Layleen started that fight, that
it happened exactly like the DC said it did because
we know that Rikers is a really violent place. Fights
are common and triggers abound, especially for trans people. The
CEOs will pick fights with you. The amytal pick fights
(41:33):
with you. We asked Kristen Leval about this.
Speaker 7 (41:36):
I'm not trying to come in here every five minutes
defending my existence, you know what I mean, Like I
am trying to go home, you know, Like I'm not
trying to sit up here and collect tickets to be
fighting with people.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
Layleen was charged with violating the rules because of her fight,
and on May fourteenth, almost a month after she arrived
at Rikers, Layleen had a disciplinary hearing. Her punishment was
twenty days in punitive segregation better known as solitary confinement.
(42:11):
But a punishment like this doesn't happen right away at Rikers.
The sentence doesn't actually specify when it needs to be served.
That depends on a lot of things, including how many
solitary confinement cells are available. So Layleen goes back to
(42:34):
her dorm in the transgender housing unit, and this is
when we begin to see in the records that Layleen's
mental health is suffering. After her hearing, she got into
another fight with someone back in her dorm. An officer
decided to refer Layleen to mental health services. They said
(42:57):
on the referral form that Layleen was showing radical changes
in behavior. I think back to that scene in Orange
is the New Black, where Sophia Bursette is demanding medical attention.
Speaker 3 (43:12):
I'd like to report an emergency.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
She goes as far as swallowing a babblehead, and that
was an intentional cry for help. Leyleen's situation likely was not,
but I wonder how bad things had to get before
Layleen was given the care she deserved. After her last fight,
(43:38):
Layleen was able to speak with a counselor. Then a
clinician recommended that she be returned to her housing unit,
but she wasn't. Instead, DOC transfers her somewhere New somewhere
called Transgender Housing Unit, New Admissions. It's a bit of
(43:59):
a mouth and it turns out it's not an official
housing area. It's basically off the grid and because of that,
it's not subject to proper supervision. When Kate McMahon was
investigating Leileen's death, even she had a hard time figuring
(44:21):
out where and what this housing area was.
Speaker 5 (44:25):
It was an area that was supposed to be temporary,
but part of our investigation was just really trying to
figure out what is this unit, How did these kind
of new admissions units function, What if any, are the
written policies around these units, of which there weren't any.
Speaker 1 (44:43):
This unit just popped up out of nowhere and was
totally lawless, and somehow this is a normal thing that
happens at Rikers.
Speaker 5 (44:53):
At the Border Correction is doing oversight. That was a
constant sort of whack a mole. We have monitors who
go into the shells every day and would routinely find
these new housing areas that we weren't otherwise aware of,
but for the fact we happened to walk into them.
That's sort of been an issue for oversight for a
(45:14):
long time, is how to really regulate these units that
just sort of pop up that may or may not
ensure that people have access to the minimum standards that
they're entitled to.
Speaker 1 (45:26):
On May fifteenth, a day after her mental health visit,
Layleen woke up in this housing unit, but she didn't
leave herself for breakfast or any other services. She did
come out when it was time to take medication, but
refused to take it. According to the Board of Corrections report.
(45:47):
Leyleen quote began rolling around on the floor in the
day room, talking to herself and growling.
Speaker 5 (45:55):
I think it's otherwise clear that she was decompensating quite
a bit as soon as she got to jail.
Speaker 1 (46:04):
This term decompensating refers to the process of a person
losing their ability to regulate their mental health. Leyleen had
been in Rikers for about a month, and for the
second day in a row, an officer flagged her mental
state on a referral form. The officer circled the following
(46:28):
showing radical changes in behavior, expressing a desire to commit
suicide and or attempting suicide, Frequent displays of shouting, crying
and or screaming, having hallucinations delusions, seeing objects or hearing
voices that do not exist, showing poor personal hygiene or appearance,
(46:51):
doesn't shave, wash or change clothes, etc. Being alarmed, frightened,
or in a state of pain, and unusual action or
behavior that should be brought to the attention of the
mental health staff. The officer also wrote in inmate randomly crying, shouting.
Speaker 6 (47:16):
There are a couple of foundational mental health challenges for
everybody inherent in mass incarceration.
Speaker 1 (47:26):
This is doctor Homer Venters. He has worked in healthcare
at the city's jails for nearly a decade and served
as the chief medical officer for NYC jails, including Rikers
up until twenty seventeen, just a couple years before Lalen
was there. He's also the author of Life and Death
(47:46):
in Rikers Island, which is an indictment of the dangers
he witnessed there.
Speaker 6 (47:52):
People's mental health gets worse when they're put into violent,
chaotic settings, and jails especially are very violent and chaotic settings.
The stimulus, the thing that's making things worse is the
setting itself.
Speaker 1 (48:06):
In the doc's incident reporting system, there's a log book
entry from around the same time that says Layleen approached
an officer with aggressive hand gestures toward the facial area.
The officer extended her arm and ordered Layleen to stop,
but Layleen moved forward and struck the officer on her forearm. Afterwards,
(48:32):
Layleen quote was found sitting on the floor of the cell,
refusing to engage with staff. She was transferred by mental
health staff to Elmhurst Hospital, where she would spend nine days.
Speaker 6 (48:46):
Patients may go to the hospital for treatments or assessment
that can't happen in the jail infirmary, and so at
any given time, there may be two, there may be
twenty people who are in Elmhurst, or they may even
be at other hospitals, and then that room is going
to have, if it's not a locked ward, they're going
(49:07):
to have two correction officers there for the whole time
probably that they're hospitalized.
Speaker 1 (49:16):
Laleen was in the psychiatric prison ward at the hospital
and when she returns to Rikers, she's in a vulnerable position.
She has already been moved into three different housing units
and been in the hospital. She's fully entrenched in this
chaos and it's affecting her. Like doctor Vinter said, Rikers,
(49:40):
itself exacerbates mental illness.
Speaker 6 (49:43):
When people come into a jail or a prison, they're
more likely to experience abuse, neglect, jail instributable.
Speaker 1 (49:51):
Death, the criminalization of sex work, and the courts and
the bell system. That's all led Leyleen to this point.
That's what put her here, and transphobia is all around her.
Cops and judges and correction officers, they've all been exposed
(50:16):
to narratives that dehumanize trans women. They've all seen movies
and TV shows that show us solely as a stereotype. Hell,
they're the stars of those shows, the heroes. Even trans
people have been depicted as unworthy of being treated equally
(50:36):
and as people who it's okay to cast away behind bars.
Speaker 6 (50:42):
They're more likely to have those things happen to them
if they fall into these groups. That security staff and
even health staff view is nonconforming. So if somebody's LGBTQUI,
if somebody has a serious mental health problem, if somebody
speaks up for them, there are all sorts of elements
(51:02):
to a person's identity that can elicit worse treatment or
worse care behind bars.
Speaker 1 (51:11):
Lalen ticked many of these boxes. She was even accused
of assaulting an officer. Whether or not she was in
the throes of a mental health crisis at the time,
the people entrusted with keeping her alive may no longer
be all that invested in doing so.
Speaker 6 (51:29):
I haven't reviewed any of the records in her case,
but it's certainly been my experience that many of the
jail attributable deaths that I investigate involve people that the
security service had decided was a problem or was causing
them headaches or shouldn't be trusted, and that is a problem.
Speaker 1 (51:52):
Layleen's death is what doctor Vincors calls jail attributable. She
should have. It's Riker's fault that she isn't alive. That's
next time on Afterlives.
Speaker 12 (52:10):
A medical doctor was asked, can this person be put
in solitary in light of their seizure disorder?
Speaker 3 (52:18):
And they answered yes.
Speaker 12 (52:20):
And to me, if anyone were going to be held
criminally accountable for Laylan's death, that's the direction I would
have looked.
Speaker 11 (52:31):
I remember the ould SVANGI man Hard and I went
and looked up and I don't think she says her
any movement, but she was just like, oh, I kept walking.
Speaker 5 (52:41):
That's forty one minutes where no one's observing her, which
is in violation of the segregation unit policy.
Speaker 4 (52:47):
Had that been the case, honestly think she would still
be alive.
Speaker 1 (53:04):
Thank you so much for listening to Afterlives. You can
find this episode and future ones on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Please leave
us a rating and review to let us know what
you think. After Lives is a production of iHeart Podcasts.
(53:24):
And The Outspoken Podcast Network in partnership with the School
of Humans. I'm your host and creator Raquel Willis. Dylan
Hoyer is our senior producer and scriptwriter. Our associate producer
is Joey pat Sound design and engineering by Jess Krinchich,
(53:45):
story editing by Aaron Edwards and Julia Furlan, fact checking
by Savannah Hugile. Our show art is by Makai Baldwin.
Score composed by Wisely Array. Our production manager is Daisy Church.
Executive producers include me, Raquel Willis, and Jay Brunson from
(54:09):
The Outspoken Podcast Network, Michael Alder June and Noel Brown
from iHeart Podcasts, Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr and Elsie Crowley
from School of Humans and The Cats Company. School of Humans,
Host
Raquel Willis
Popular Podcasts
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.