After about three days of being isolated in “the Box” away from his fellow detainees at Rikers Island, Ismael Nazario was beginning to break.

“That’s when it started to take it’s toll,” he said, conjuring memories of his time in punitive segregation — solitary confinement — in one of the nation’s biggest jail complexes. “I was just like, ‘Yo, I cannot be here like this.’”

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