Nor Are We Out of It

[tmcg]

Yesterday I went to visit a friend who's in detention on Rikers Island. No full body cavity or strip searches, no coarse treatment; the processing of visitors is a protracted waiting exercise (a one-hour visit takes three to five hours all told, not counting your time traveling to the entrance to the bridge to the island), but almost everyone was polite, human, and cooperative, that day at least. (I hear the experience differs depending on luck of the draw, the mood of various corrections officers, and who happens to be visiting at the same time you are.) There are arcane rules about what you can bring, some of which make sense when you think about them for a while (you can't bring a white shirt for a prisoner to wear to a court appearance; weird, right? but it could conceivably make it possible for him to impersonate a lawyer and escape) and some of which will never make sense except in a context of harassment and powertripping. There are, in fact, arcane rules about everything, and the experience, right down to the brightly colored Romper Room plastic furniture in the visitors' room, can be surreal. But after seeing my friend, I can only conclude that Rikers, a weirdly locationless place of detention--or, at any rate, the North Infirmary Command--is proof that limbo experienced for long enough, especially when there is no indication of how long that long will be, is no different from any other flavor of hell...except that the Christian concept is based on a theory of just punishment.