Three women sit in front of me, each one occupying a salon chair in a tiny room with a single shampoo bowl, and one window that faces a bare, enclosed courtyard with yellowing grass. They’re smiling, chatting, and eating pizza as they wait for their hair to set and process. We could be in any hair salon in New York City, albeit a small one, except for a few caveats: These women couldn’t enter this room until they had been scanned by a handheld metal detector and patted down. There are also armed guards right outside the door. And the mirrors aren’t really mirrors. In fact, they aren’t made of glass at all; they’re made of polycarbonate, a plastic material that mimics the look of a wonky funhouse reflector, to prevent people from shattering the surface and using broken shards as weapons. After the women’s glam session is done, they won’t be going to an event or returning to their families or children, their jobs, or even their homes. They’ll stay here, at the Rose M. Singer Center on Rikers Island, to finish out their court-ordered sentences.

Rosie’s, the center’s nickname, is the only facility that houses women and gender-expansive people in the notorious Bronx jail complex—the same one that’s been called the “most infamous jail in the US” due to its high rates of violence and disorder. To get into the salon at Rosie’s, first I had to check in through a trailer at the foot of the Francis R. Buono Memorial Bridge, the only way to get on and off the island. Then, after going through TSA-like security, I was escorted through three separate checkpoints where I needed to hold up a numbered badge that identified me as a visitor. Although I had gotten special permission to bring my laptop and recorder inside, I did have to leave my phone behind.

The salon is located in Rosie’s recreation area, where vocational programs like culinary lessons and cosmetology take place, as well as high school and college classes. It looks more like a school than a jail: Inspirational posters line the walls with sayings like, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail,” and many of these emphasize the importance of attending class and making it to graduation day.

Before meeting the three women, volunteers with the Beauty Beyond Bars program were warned by guards and administrators to hide scissors or sharp objects and to monitor every product that was visible in the room. “This will go missing,” one Rikers staff member warns, pointing to a row of Redken hair products neatly laid out on a small table. “It’s happened right in front of my face. The women are slicker than the men.”

I made the journey here for a one-day pilot program put on by Beauty Beyond Bars, a nonprofit organization founded by 21-year-old criminal justice reform advocate Lea Nepomuceno, which seeks to deliver essential beauty and hygiene products to incarcerated people. The group has partnered with Citryne Rose, a hair salon in Manhattan, founded by hairstylist Julie Dastine, to give the three soon-to-be-released women hair transformations before they head home and re-enter society. New York-based makeup artist Maricela Saucedo is also here to help the women with their glam.

Today’s program is explicitly for women who have an impending release date, are okay with speaking to the press, and willing to be on camera for Beauty Beyond Bars’ and Allure’s social channels. According to the New York City Council, as of June 13, 2026, around 84% of the inmates on Rikers Island have not yet been convicted of a crime—they’re either held on bail or remanded to custody as they await trial. The rest, including the women in today’s program, have been convicted and are serving short sentences, typically under one year. After they were patted down, the women timidly entered the small space, sitting side-by-side in salon chairs to wait for Dastine and her two assistants to assess their hair.

Although Nepomuceno and Dastine had introductory Zoom calls with nine potential women to discuss what they’d like to get done, the three in the salon today didn’t know they were chosen for the program until right before they were escorted into the room. “They didn’t tell us this was happening,” Daesha Holloman, 31, tells me. She’ll be released from Rikers in November.

Dastine stands behind Holloman and slowly unfurls her hijab—she’s been wearing one on-and-off for six years—revealing a knotty mass. “The only thing I have access to is shampoo and grease, and a comb that’s thinner than this,” Holloman says, pointing to an already tiny brush in front of her. There’s not much she can do to care for her hair behind bars. Dastine and her associates decide the best course of action is to give her a silk press and a trim, which results in a long bob.

Adia Charles, 28, is next; she’s worn her hair in locs for almost five years, and hasn’t been able to properly care for it since she’s been here. The locs have been dyed half red, half blonde, and Dastine decides to give Charles’s color new life today, along with a twist out.

“I’m getting out Tuesday,” says Lizette Lugo, 47, who is waiting to get her hair washed in the shampoo bowl. “I’m excited but I’m also nervous. It’s a new start.” She’s been serving time at Rosie’s for the past six months. “They see me as a house mom,” she adds. She has asked Dastine to make her blonde to cover up the grays that have grown in since she’s been here.

Each woman is wearing a microphone and being filmed for social content. (Part of Beauty Beyond Bars' goal with the program is to interview the women during the services and share their stories on social media.) Although they were aware of this beforehand, they are still (understandably) tense and nervous in front of the camera at first. But as the day unfolds, Holloman, Charles, and Lugo start to open up about their lives on Rikers Island. Corrections officers near the door supervise, and Latima Johnson, press officer at the New York City Department of Correction, and Nadely Tavarez, executive director of facility program for the Rose M. Singer Center, listen in. Naturally, given the setting, the conversation turns to the inmates’ inadequate access to hygiene and beauty products.

“Right now, I can’t really do much,” says Charles. “I just shampoo and condition my hair. The water is pretty hot here, so it dries out my hair.” There aren’t any oils available for her locs, only hair grease, which she says is heavy and weighs down her hair. This is something that has bothered her during the four months she’s been incarcerated: “I like to be neat, I like to keep myself together. I make sure my T-shirts are nice and white and I wash my clothes,” she says. The inmates have to do that washing by hand with homemade laundry detergent composed of deodorant and grease, but Charles thinks it’s worth the effort. “When you look good, you feel good,” she adds. “I can’t wait to get out of here and go to the nail salon and get a facial.”

Sometimes these desires prompt ideas and action—there are plenty of ways the women of Rikers, and in jails and prisons nationwide, hack the system to make themselves feel beautiful. Some of these practices have been reported on before, such as rubbing deodorant against colored pages from magazines to make eye shadow. “They melt down the bars of Corcraft [soap] and it becomes a thick gel consistency,” Charles says. “They use that for edge control or gel.” [Editor’s note: Corcraft is a program that employs incarcerated people in correctional facilities across New York to make products such as hand sanitizer, street signs, furniture, and more, for around $0.65 an hour.]

There are also women who have picked up beauty-related skills, like threading eyebrows with tampon strings. Lugo has gotten that done a few times since being here: “Sometimes you have to give [the threader] commissary, and sometimes they do it to pass the time,” she says. “Or you make friends and they do it for you, just for one another so we look good.”

Lugo regularly wears makeup—she works as a suicide-prevention aide in her housing unit and uses the money she earns from that job to buy products from the commissary—but not every day. “I’ll take, like, two days and I won't put makeup on. I'll let my face breathe a little bit,” she says. “Foundation is like $11.” She also buys CoverGirl and L’Oreal eye shadow, mascara, and eyeliner. “They sell ChapStick and Wet n Wild lipstick,” she adds.

When it comes to hair care, though, Lugo has found her options lacking. She doesn’t wash her hair often because, she says, the shampoo available in the commissary burns her scalp. Getting her hair washed today, she adds, is a luxury. She’s also excited for a makeup artist to glam her face—she’s only ever gotten her makeup done at mall kiosks and is especially eager to put on Ardell fake lashes.

Holloman and Charles are on the other end of the makeup spectrum from Lugo: Charles doesn’t generally wear much makeup, in or out of Rikers; and Holloman doesn’t think spending her commissary money on lipstick is worth it. “The foundation is not the best quality, and we use sponges that you clean with, not sponges you’re supposed to use for your face,” Holloman says, as Saucedo blends Dior foundation on her face near the only window. “So I don’t know how I would feel doing makeup here. It’s not the same as having concealer and access to regular things.”

The women’s anxieties, while still palpable, seem to wane as they’re taken care of by Saucedo and Dastine and her staff. During a pizza break, the conversation ebbs and flows—one minute the women are talking about what their fellow inmates' reactions to their new looks will be, and the next they’re dreaming about their lives after Rikers Island. Charles aspires to become a barber, and she and Holloman want to start a podcast together about incarcerated women. “That’s my best friend, I'm not gonna lie,” Charles says. “We really love each other and care about each other in here.”

Having a mic doesn’t appeal to Lugo—she just wants to see her family and ride a Jet Ski. “I have a window view and all I see is people riding Jet Skis back and forth [on the East River],” she explains. “They’re a lot of fun.”

Holloman yearns to see her daughter, who was just four months old when she was sent to Rikers Island. She’s determined to not be defined by her past mistakes. Being chosen to participate in today's beauty transformation has inspired her. “You take programs like this, opportunities like this, and you run with them and you give the best version of yourself,” she says. “I’m bigger than being incarcerated, and there’s people who actually believe in me. I feel like if they didn’t, I wouldn’t have been considered [for this program].”

But Holloman hasn’t always felt this spark of positivity. “The Department of Corrections can [make] you lose yourself, for a lack of better words,” she says. “You have to be strong enough to not fall into the dehumanizing situation…. You have to look at the end of the tunnel. It’s hard. I have my days where I forget I am going home.”

The shift in energy seems to draw members of the jail staff toward Rosie’s salon. They gather outside, pulling up chairs and trying to glimpse the women as they are outwardly—and, it seems, inwardly—transformed. Each time a woman’s hair or makeup is finished, they cheer, clap, and yell words of encouragement. They erupt into the chorus of Eve’s “Who’s That Girl” when Holloman “activates” her bob (a.k.a. swings it side to side). Some have tears in their eyes, and it’s hard not to cry along with them.

“The feeling that I have right now, I never knew I would feel like this,” Holloman says, turning toward Charles as they both get emotional. “To see you with your hair almost done and everything, it’s seeing another side of each other,” she continues. “We have real beauty. Like natural, actual beauty.”

After changing out of their uniforms and into more professional-looking clothing from Rosie’s “boutique,” which is a small closet of donated attire, Polaroid “headshots” are taken of each woman. They’ll be mailed to each woman’s family when the day is over. “I’m not telling my son my picture’s coming in the mail, I’ll let it be a surprise,” Lugo says. “I wonder if he’ll know it’s me, because I look totally different [from my mugshot].” That difference is not only because of her hair and makeup transformation, though; Lugo also received a set of dentures from Rikers’ basic dental services when she arrived. “I’ve been without teeth for three years,” she says.

Although today’s program paints a rather, well, rosy picture of life on Rikers Island, there’s been a constant stream of disturbing and violent incidents throughout Rosie’s near hundred-year history: Inmates and staff members have reported unsanitary and unsafe conditions; and in 2024, 719 sexual assault lawsuits were filed under the Adult Survivors Act against the Department of Correction by female inmates, whose claims extend from 1976 up to 2023, according to Gothamist. This act temporarily lifted the statutes of limitations, allowing survivors to sue their abusers regardless of when the harm occurred.

In 2019, the New York City Council voted to close the island's facilities and replace them with four smaller jails throughout the five boroughs by August 2027. However, according to Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s office, the city will no longer be able to meet that deadline due to construction delays from the COVID-19 pandemic; the proposed new deadline is 2032.

With the pilot program successfully completed, Beauty Beyond Bars hopes to be approved to bring similar events back to Rikers twice a month. “Our long-term goal is to build an inside-out re-entry model,” Nepomuceno says. “Programming and career training inside correctional facilities, paired with salons on the outside that employ graduates of our programs. Ultimately, we hope to scale this model to cities across the country.”

She says further, “Getting a program like this off the ground is incredibly challenging, but the Rikers staff, especially Nadely Tavarez, has been amazing in helping us navigate the process. We’re the first to do this kind of work at Rikers, so it requires a tremendous amount of logistics and flexibility within the correctional environment. But seeing the physical and spiritual transformations of the women during our pilot reminded me exactly why it’s worth it.” Right now, Nepomuceno notes, the biggest challenge for Beauty Beyond Bars is “long-term fundraising to support our staff and materials.”

At press time, no concrete plans have been made for the next program, although Dastine, Saucedo, and Tavarez have all expressed, too, that they’d like today’s program to come back to Rosie’s. “I try to teach my child that hygiene is everything, but it’s not just to look nice,” Tavarez points out. “It’s because people will treat you a certain way. I feel that these women can gain confidence [in this program] after going through such a traumatic time in their lives.”

But a fresh silk press and a set of lashes can’t erase the long-lasting trauma of life behind bars or end mass incarceration. People serving time in correctional facilities disproportionately experience mental health problems, substance abuse, infectious diseases, and chronic conditions compared with the general public. They often experience these hardships before incarceration, and often they aren’t addressed after they re-enter society.

Almost one third of formerly incarcerated people return to prison within three years, according to the Council of State Governments Justice Center. Formerly incarcerated people also face an unemployment rate of over 27% due to social stigma and discriminatory policies, including occupational license bans that exclude formerly incarcerated people. “Having an arrest on your record or being in jail creates a stigma that makes life difficult for people that are already facing challenges and difficulties,” says Deborah Koetzle, PhD, director of the Corrections Lab and a professor of criminal justice at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Still, taking care of incarcerated women, even for one day, might just revitalize a sense of self-worth. “Providing this type of service on one day to just a few women, I don't know if it's going to make a dent in changing carceral policy,” says Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein, PhD, a professor in the Department of Population Health Sciences at Duke University whose research examines the health effects of the criminal legal system. “But we also know that individual differences can be made with the smallest adjustments or kindness. Any program that allows for women's humanity to be restored in these deeply humiliating and dehumanizing settings is a good thing, and will have both immediate and long-term benefits.”

Dr. Koetzle shares that opinion, adding that there’s more work to be done: “If this program is continuing to work with women so that when they come home, they're being provided access to clothing and support around employment and childcare and connections to services, then that becomes more holistic and, I think, much more meaningful. But I'm not sure that a headshot alone, for example, or hair products alone is going to have a long-term impact given the number of challenges that people face.” Instead, Dr. Koetzle says, providing meaningful programming and career training prior to release, as well as linking people with opportunities for employment, may have a more significant impact.

All three women who take part in the pilot program tell Allure the same thing as they say their goodbyes: They feel beautiful, their self-esteem has been boosted, and they’re ready to make a positive change in their lives after they’re released from Rosie’s. “Being in here can really bring you down,” Charles says. “I feel different walking out. I feel more confident. I feel like myself again, you know?”

By the time you read this, Charles and Lugo will have left Rikers Island; Holloman is still serving the rest of her sentence. “I’m excited. I’m anxious,” she says. “I really want to hit the ground running when I leave here. And I could never come back here ever again.”

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