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Jan Ransom over the New York Times.

She says the problems at Rikers Island, New York City's notorious jail,

they begin before you even get there.

One guy spoke to the other day said, you know, he'd been waiting, I believe, like 18 hours

for a bus to pick him up. And when it did pick him up, it was in like 3.30 in the morning.

So, you know, an odd hour, you know, people

were sleepy, hungry. This guy was transferring from a holding pen in a city courthouse to the

intake facility at Rikers. That's where you're first processed. And intake is the place that, you know,

every person I talk to, every detainee I speak with says it's disgusting.

There's feces on the floor, urine, throw up.

You often wait hours for food.

And by hours, I don't mean one or two, you could be waiting the equivalent of two shifts, which could mean 16 hours or 24.

Intake doesn't have, you know, any beds or it's not designed to be comfortable. One gentleman I spoke to said that he was in an intake cell with like upwards of 20 people.

But they created a sort of system to accommodate each other.

So, you know, a couple would sleep on the bench one night and then swap out and sleep on the floor.

So you have people trying to make the best of a really, really bad situation.

I'm not sure anyone expects a jail to be nice. But over the last few weeks, after touring Riker's facilities,

New York politicians have described the conditions there in graphic detail.

We saw dead cockroaches. We saw rotting food. It was awful.

Yes, in one of the intake facilities, it's so overcrowded that they've been staying in rooms

...