Anna Sussman

She knew him as the stickler.

He had this graying hair and he was older, like in his mid-60s.

Amika tried to navigate around him, keeping her head low.

She'd go to the mess hall and the law library, her work assignment, the yard, and back to her cell.

But she kept getting in trouble everywhere.

And every time she'd get written up, the punishments would escalate.

And then one time, a few weeks in, she saw this thing happening in front of her, and she felt she had no choice but to get involved.

Porter is one of the jobs for incarcerated women.

A porter would clean up after people.

And your sidecar is the person who sleeps in the bunk next to you.

And that's when Amika and her sidecar got into a fight.

A big fight.

And it was after the fight died down in her cell that a cop, a prison guard, came to take Amika away.

She was given 40 days in solitary confinement.

And as the green cop marched her across the yard towards the isolation unit, he casually mentioned, there goes your contact visit with your kids.

They can still come down to the prison, but no contact.

He said she'd have to look at them through a glass window.

Amika still felt it would do more harm than good to have her kids visit through a pane of glass.

It had been a year and a half.

There would be no in-person visit.