Guards and Inmates Totally Do It At Rikers

In a tell-all that’s almost certainly destined to become the basis for the plot of several Law & Order episodes, a former guard at Rikers claims that female guards and male inmates are doing all kinds of sex in there.

Yolanda Dickinson worked as a guard at the 12,000 inmate facility for several years before leaving in 2004 and has recently penned a book about the “soap opera” of romantic entanglements that happens between the inmates and almost 4,000 female guards.

While the New York Post found it appropriate to make lighthearted jokes about the LOLinmates falling in LOLlove with the LOLlonely women, not one element of this story didn’t make me sad- that there are so many men (the overwhelming majority of whom are economically disenfranchised and most of whom are minorities) in America locked up, that there are so many women who are so lonely that the only place that they can meet men is when they’re in an environment that they literally cannot leave, and that anyone in such a dramatic position of power over another person would take advantage of that power asymmetry to procure sexual satisfaction.