“By the time Jessica Lee Roger was discovered on the floor of her prison cell on Aug. 17, 2002, it was too late. In the 24 minutes since guards had last checked her, she had tied a bed sheet around her neck and, after many attempts over three years in prison, finally strangled herself. When word of Roger’s suicide spread through the cellblocks of the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility that sultry weekend, two correction officers cried. Fellow inmates were angry. The superintendent, who was away for a few days, was devastated. A mentally ill young woman had died, and she had died in the most stressful and isolating place in the New York state prison system. Jessica Roger, 21, killed herself in the ”box,” and many thought she didn’t belong there.” (The New York Times Magazine)
