Of all the stories to emerge about the horrors of life on Rikers Island in recent years, Candie Hailey’s is among the most horrifying. For two years, Hailey was kept in solitary confinement for a crime for which she was eventually acquitted, a time she says was filled with physical and sexual abuse from guards. Now, …

Plenty of people are chewed up and spit out by American prisons all the time. Few of them are chewed up, spit out, bitten into, swirled around, digested, regurgitated, and eaten yet again quite like Candie Hailey has been in the last several years.

Candie Hailey did a three-year pretrial stint at Rikers Island before facing a jury on charges of attempted murder last year. She spent more than two thirds of that time in solitary confinement, and attempted suicide eight times. When Hailey finally got her day in court, the jury found her not guilty. “I would say…