Supreme Court Weighs House of Detention Re-Opening
Following a 75-person rally (that included Comptroller Thompson, Senator Adams and Council Member James and Yassky) on the front steps of the State Supreme Court building yesterday morning, Justice Sylvia Hinds-Radix began hearing arguments from the City and from the community group called Stop BHOD which had filed a lawsuit arguing that the city acted…
Following a 75-person rally (that included Comptroller Thompson, Senator Adams and Council Member James and Yassky) on the front steps of the State Supreme Court building yesterday morning, Justice Sylvia Hinds-Radix began hearing arguments from the City and from the community group called Stop BHOD which had filed a lawsuit arguing that the city acted improperly by failing to alert the public about the reopening and planned expansion of the facility and not submitting its plan for an environmental impact analysis. According to the Brooklyn Eagle, The argument seemed to boil down to whether or not the city had technically closed the jail back in 2003, and thus would have to re-open it, or whether it had continued to operate it, albeit in a diminished capacity. This is a closed prison, argued Randy Mastro on behalf of Stop BHOD. Five years later, you have a transformed neighborhood. Countered the corporation counsel: There is a jail in Downtown Brooklyn. It exists. It has existed for 50 years. We need it. Both sides have until February 11 to submit additional documents to the court; in the meantime, the city will not house additional overnight prisoners in the facility.
Judge Hears Arguments For and Against ‘Reopening’ of Jail [Brooklyn Eagle]
Closing Bell: HOD Rally Coming Next Week [Brownstoner] GMAP
Inside the Brooklyn House of Detention [Brownstoner]
Not Enough Cash for the HOD [Brownstoner]
HOD Re-Opens for Business [Brownstoner]
Saying No to House of D [Brownstoner]
“You and bxgirl can show up at the those meetings and say that Boerum Hill is filled with pretentious bourgeoise scum and that they deserve their just desserts in the form of a new jail twice the size of the old one.”
sam- don’t put words in my mouth. Nowhere did I say the jail should be expanded- nor do I advocate expanding the jail to punish pretentious bourgeois scum (your words not mine). I guarantee you that when I go to meetings like that (as I’ve done so in the past for various issues), I go prepared to make my points based on facts, not name calling. That’s the technique of grumpy people whose facts are falling short of reality.
Sam, the fact is the jail is usable as it is. I know for a fact that the renovations made in the early part of this decade brought it up to standards deemed acceptable by the correctional community across the country. It may not be a modern layout with today’s fixtures and amenities but it meets the acceptable standards and it is certainly better than the five jails that are literally falling apart on Rikers Island. Those buildings are going to have to come down.
Brooklyn House was renovated so that a) the DOC haa a place to put inmates if there ia a sudden rise in crime and the population increasea as courts get backed up, b) as a place to shift close to 800 inmates from Rikers if one of those 5 crumbling buildings had to be closed under an emergency order, c) to potentially be used as a place to take people picked up in mass arrests so that the police department doesn’t have to set up a deplorable temporary holding cell system on a pier over the Hudson River as was done during the Republican convention in 2004.
The cost benefit analysis has been done and the Department of Corrections has shown how housing close to 800 inmates at Brooklyn House would save them money. That had to do that in order to justify the millions of dollars it cost to renovate the building.
Why hasn’t the DOC just put inmates in there then? Because it’s a political hot potato. Remember the outrage produced when the Mayor closed 5 firehouses so they could shift resources to parts of Brooklyn that didn’t have adequate fire protection? At this point, the mayor’s administration isn’t ready and willing to take the heat they will get from some folks in our part of Brooklyn if that jail is used. But evetually, as the budget crisis gets worse and they don’t have the money in the capital budget to fix the crumbling jails on Rikers, they will take the heat and shift inmates to Brooklyn House. Eventually it will happen.
It would be fantastic if the city had the money to build a new, modern jail facility next to the new criminal court; a building that blended better into the surrounding structures. Better jails are always better for society as a whole. But I think if the city had the money, it would be put to better use building a few new schools in our neighborhood. Our elementary and middle schools around here are completely overcrowded and because of the increase in the number of residential units this decade, they are only going to get more crowded in the future.
The fact that the jail was closed speaks volumes to the excellent job that the NYPD did in keeping crime at a minimum. The inmate population was at its lowest and steadily declining in the past few years but the current financial climate, this no doubt will change. In the advent of Hurricane Katrina, the federal government forced the Department to evaluate its evacuation plan. When they did they realized that they could not possibly evacuate all of the inmates and staff from the island in the event of a hurricane or other natural disaster. So this forced them to once again consider not having its base of operations and all inmates concentrated on an island that is mostly landfill, below sea level in the East River.
fsrq, I am making a very self-evident point, which you are obviously missing. If the HOD were usable, it would be in use today. Corrections does not need any special permits to open up the existing facility, the fact they have chosen not to do so speaks volumes.
The community does not want to see the size of the jail increased, and I think that is understandable, they will fight hard, very hard to prevent a doubling in size.
Such a change would need to go through the usual public reviews. You and bxgirl can show up at the those meetings and say that Boerum Hill is filled with pretentious bourgeoise scum and that they deserve their just desserts in the form of a new jail twice the size of the old one.
Sam:
“The current facility is of use to no one, including corrections. if it were suitable, it would have been put to use by now.”
And what makes you think that????
Sam you make alot of statments with no back up.
Well I certainly agree with you on that (in hopes of making you less grumpy.)Although if the city does decide to keep it closed and set up a new jail, I still say they’ll put it in one of the poorer neighborhoods. Brooklyn deserves better, I agree.
I think you all should chill. This jail is not going to be relocated to Crown Heights or any other residential community. In fact, I think it should stay where it is, but in a new, usable guise that respects the streetlife along Atlantic Avenue and that does not act like a giant pedestrian obstacle in one of brownstone brooklyn’s main east-west arteries. No one is saying the jail should be located in another residential neighborhood. It could be moved to another spot Downtown perhaps, like the site of the TA building on Jay, but again, it would need to blend in the way modern urban detention centers do. Geez, this thread is making me grumpy. The current facility is of use to no one, including corrections. if it were suitable, it would have been put to use by now. The existing building needs to be replaced by a modern facility. A better facility. We deserve it. Brooklyn is changing for the better. Corrections has mis-spent so much money already that now I think it is stuck with this dinosaur, that it can’t use, but is afraid to admit it.
sam- as I said- I lived over there for 23 years. It was no hellhole. It’s filled now with new buildings, yes but they weren’t built to improve the neighborhood, they were built because the neighborhood was already desirable. It may not have been up to your aesthetic standards, but it wasn’t a “pit.” It was a typical big road intersection, gas stations, parking lots, old buildings. Surrounded by beautiful brownstone neighborhoods that kept appreciating in value. And lets not forget all the less than upscale businesses that were on Court St. for years, making money and providing loads of area amenities. Maybe not upscale enough for you, but more than adequate. Court St. was never the disney version of a neighborhood street.
I don’t hate the locals. I just resent the newbies thinking the improvements to the area began when they came in, when in fact it was the efforts of long time residents who brought the neighborhood up. I lived through it- I lived through having a boarded up, drug dealer infested building on my block to watching beautiful old churches torn down to put up a p.o.s. condo building, and seeing the porn theater become a B & N. Atlantic/Boerum is a huge, scary, noisy street to cross-and had long been commercial/civic in nature. and that was the main reason it took so long to build residential there.
What you’re looking at over the last 5 years is the jump on the bandwagon syndrome, not the build the new frontier syndrome. Chaka is right. If the city caves in to StopBHOD it will be a struggling neighborhood like Crown Heights or Bed-Stuy that will be getting stuck with a new jail.Just like they are trying to stick a citywide intake center in the Bedford Armory.
Disagree all you want but the fact is those new residents in all the new buildings that have gone up in the last 5-6 years are not responsible for the improvements, they moved there because of them.
Thanks BrooklynSteve and Bx Girl and Chaka for talking sense. I lived in the Heights from 1980 to 1990 or so and the jail was never an issue. And the Heights was just as gentrified then as it is now. It would be ridiculous to try and build a new jail somewhere, who would accept it?
It well behooves the city to keep an extra jail on hand. You never know what the future will bring. The murder rate is up and things can get worse just as fast as they got better. What happens if there’s a serious insurrection? Nothing wrong with being prepared.