Some quotes from a long article on the process to close and open these jails...
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2...o-close-rikers
Inside the Battle to Close Rikers
Can New York City build its way out of mass incarceration?
By MAURICE CHAMMAH
3.22.2019
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...The commission enlisted the Van Alen Institute, an architecture think tank, to develop innovative approaches to jail design, partly by soliciting input from people who have been incarcerated. Even before conceiving of actual structures, the commission noted, the most important step would be finding the right locations. About 10 percent of the inmates at Rikers are transported off of the island to court appearances each day. The trips take hours to complete and cost $31 million a year. The remote location also makes it difficult for families, lawyers, teachers and other service providers to visit and help those inside.
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Kaplan was tasked with finding potential sites near city courthouses. Given the density of development in New York and the high cost of real estate, one major restriction narrowed the search: To start building the new jails quickly, sites would have to be on land owned by the city. Manhattan and Brooklyn already had operating jails, which could be torn down to make way for new construction, and there is a dormant facility in Queens that could similarly be demolished. (Most recently, it was used to film the Netflix series “Orange Is the New Black.”) Kaplan said that the mayor decided not to try to build a jail in Staten Island because the facility would be too small to justify the cost; some critics of the de Blasio plan have suspected that the decision was made because the borough, which is generally more politically conservative than the rest of the city, would be the most vehemently opposed to housing a jail.
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In the Bronx, however, the only city-run jail is an aging 800-bed barge anchored in the East River. Kaplan considered a parking lot behind the Bronx criminal courts as a potential site, but Vanessa Gibson, the local City Council member, opposed the idea, saying that the jail would be too close to several schools and would burden the area with traffic. The mayor’s office ultimately chose to take over a nearby Police Department tow pound. The area’s City Council member, Diana Ayala, agreed to the location, but, when the site was announced, many residents were outraged. “The Bronx generally has been stigmatized by its criminal past, and at the gateway to the Bronx you’re going to have this big tower that presides supreme over this whole neighborhood,” Arline Parks, the chief executive of the Diego Beekman apartment complex, which sits a few blocks from the tow pound, told me.
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In Manhattan and Brooklyn, the proposed height of the jails—which, according to the plan, would be roughly 40 stories—has also been controversial. “The idea of [people] going up and down elevators all the time, it’s going to fail, chronically,” Robert Cohen, a former health director at Rikers, said. Even Lippman, who headed the commission, has been critical, telling an audience at New York Law School, “The jails are out of scale.”
Nancy Kong, the president of a residential co-op building near a jail site in Manhattan’s Chinatown, frequently shows up at Kaplan’s public appearances. Kong supports closing Rikers, but she believes that Chinatown has been unfairly saddled with courts and jails. “No other neighborhood bears this burden,” she told me. “They are proposing a 50-story building next to tenements and commercial buildings that are five to 15 stories.”
When I asked Kaplan about building more jails with smaller capacities, she noted that such a plan would be more expensive, less efficient, and politically problematic. Protesters are already objecting to the current plan. “Right now, we hear, ‘You guys are building four jails,’” she said. Imagine the blowback, she added, in a scenario where “New York City is building eight jails!”
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The proposed buildings are so tall, in part, because they have become a repository for every good idea about how jails can address the underlying causes of incarceration, including space for everything from job training and classrooms to counseling and substance-abuse treatment. During the past two years, Kaplan and other city officials have been convening expert panels and focus groups of incarcerated people and their families. They visited Sing Sing and Bedford Hills, two New York state prisons that are known for having large and comfortable visiting spaces, where kids can play games and do arts and crafts with an incarcerated parent.
“I could see these buildings we’re doing for New York City someday becoming community colleges with dormitories inside them,” Frank Greene, one of the architects working on the plan, said. He is a proponent of “direct supervision,” an approach to jail design that encourages corrections officers to walk around among those they oversee. “What came before were glass bubbles, so inmates created their own hierarchies.”
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In November, Greene and Kaplan were part of a group of city officials who flew to Denver to tour the Van Cise-Simonet Detention Center, a jail that Greene’s firm helped design, a decade ago, with the aim of housing inmates in a more humane and safe environment. From her hotel, Kaplan could see the jail, which stands about 95 feet tall, with a handsome limestone façade, and was surrounded by planters full of flowers. The jail, which houses 1,500 inmates, has often been held up as a model in planning conversations in New York, but after visiting, Kaplan felt that the facility also provided a lesson in what not to do. The classrooms were small, and there was little outdoor space. The architects were constrained, in part, by zoning laws, which prohibit structures from blocking the view of the Rocky Mountains from the Colorado state capitol.
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On a recent morning, I watched Kaplan address a room of 30 criminal-justice experts and advocates, laying out the policy puzzle facing the city. Each proposal to reduce the height of the jails entailed changes—such as moving certain cells away from direct sunlight, or housing more inmates in each area—that seemed likely to cut against the goal of making the facilities more humane and rehabilitative. One leading idea was to house all of the city’s female inmates at a single site, as opposed to building separate sections in each new facility, which would reduce the number of beds needed in three of the four jails. This would also allow the city to provide more specialized services for the women, but there are trade-offs; for instance, their lawyers and families might have to travel farther to see them.
Another suggestion concerned the number of extra beds in each facility. The city was expecting to build enough space for a population of 6,000, leaving a thousand extra beds to give corrections officers flexibility in determining housing assignments. Carmen Pineiro, a community organizer with the Bronx Defenders, suggested slashing that number. “I think that sounds awesome,” she said. Except, Vincent Schiraldi, the city’s former head of probation, said, “when a whole bunch of these guys are trying to get at a whole bunch of those guys and everybody is on lockdown.” Dan Gallagher, an architect, summed up the problem. “What happens on the inside is what makes it bigger on the outside,” he said.
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On Friday, the mayor’s office announced that it plans to centralize the women at the jail in Queens, and to build for a citywide jail population of 5,750, rather than 6,000. Both decisions allow for a slight reduction in the height of the proposed facilities. De Blasio’s office also plans to look for ways to house some people with mental illnesses outside of jails entirely, though it has not offered additional details. The next step is a land-use review, a process that includes public hearings with community boards, borough presidents, the City Planning Commission and City Council.
Opponents to the new jails, from all four boroughs, have been organizing their responses. “We all e-mail each other and talk so the mayor’s people can’t divide and conquer,” Dominick Pistone, a civic-association president in Queens, told me. Their demands largely boil down to wanting the mayor to slow the process and give greater consideration to residents’ concerns. Justin Pollock, the president of a condo association near the Brooklyn site, said, at one public hearing, “The cake is in the oven, and the city is here to only ask you what color you would like the frosting.”
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https://dw9zmd5y2p1va.cloudfront.net...s-queens-2.mp4
PROPOSED JAIL SITE: 126-02 82nd Ave., Queens
PROPOSED HEIGHT: 270 ft.
https://dw9zmd5y2p1va.cloudfront.net/rikers-bronx-2.mp4
PROPOSED JAIL SITE: 745 East 141st St., The Bronx
PROPOSED HEIGHT: 245 ft.
https://dw9zmd5y2p1va.cloudfront.net...anhattan-2.mp4
PROPOSED JAIL SITE: 124 and 125 White St., Manhattan
PROPOSED HEIGHT: 450 ft.
https://dw9zmd5y2p1va.cloudfront.net...brooklyn-2.mp4
Brooklyn
Four New Yorkers have emerged as leaders among residents who oppose aspects of the mayor's plan. From left, Justin Pollock, board president of a condominium in Brooklyn; Nancy Kong, president of a residential co-op building in Manhattan’s Chinatown; Dominick Pistone, a civic association president in Queens; Arline Parks, chief executive of the Diego Beekman Apartments in the Bronx.
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