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One of New York’s new prisons will be in the heart of Manhattan
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Neighbors say it will help turn the area into a dumping ground for incarceration.
When we talk about skyscrapers, recently we have to look towards the Middle East. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates seem immersed in a competition to see who can build the largest mega-construction and, thus, we have works such as The Line, the King Khalid International Airport, the colossal Jeddah tower, the Burj Khalifa or the new two-kilometer-high skyscraper . Now we have to look at the United States, since they are also going to build a skyscraper, a very different one.
It’s going to be a prison that looks like something out of the Judge Dredd universe.
The closure of the worst prison in the US. Thinking about New York is thinking about skyscrapers, but also about an excessive crime rate a few years ago. This rate has been decreasing in the last 30 years, but it is still a city with a good handful of prisons, detention centers and correctional facilities camouflaged on its streets. However, one of the most emblematic (because it seems taken from the ‘Batman’ stories) and dubbed the worst prison in New York, has its days numbered.
This is the prison of Rikers Island, located between the Bronx and Queens, right next to LaGuardia Airport. Americans don’t like to worry about prisons. Alcatraz is on an island, Rikers Island is the same and, right in front of it, we have ‘The Boat’, a prison ship of enormous dimensions. Rikers Island is known for both violence between inmates and abuse by guards, so much so that it was crowned the worst prison in the United States.
Four prisons distributed throughout the city. In 2019, the New York City Council voted to close the Rikers Island prison and to replace the prison with four smaller ones distributed in different parts of the city. This $8.3 billion restructuring plans to open prisons in Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx, and the Manhattan prison will be located in Chinatown.
The new ‘The Tombs’. East of Chinatown, in the heart of Manhattan, lies ‘The Tombs‘, officially called ‘Manhattan Detention Complex’. It is a building inaugurated in 1838 that began as a court and detention center, but has been used as a municipal jail for a century. It has been controversial, again, due to cases of corruption, overcrowding of prisoners and violence, but it is also a historic building that has appeared in video games, movies and series.
However, it closed in 2021 because its base will be used to build the new New York megaprison. ‘The Tombs’ has 15 floors, but the new tower is planned to be much taller. In 2022 she spoke 29 floors with capacity for 800 inmates, but tit has also been spoken 40 floors with capacity for 1,000 people. The plan was to have this new vertical prison by 2026, but different protests have delayed everything until sometime between 2027 and 2028.
The neighbors don’t like it. How would you feel having such a huge prison in your neighborhood? Well, these are the residents of Chinatown who, in 2020, demonstrated marching to New York City Hall in protest of the city’s plans. In these proposals, they argued that Chinatown had a disproportionate share of courts and corrections.
In the words of the association that organized the demonstration, it was a new episode of New York using the neighborhood as “a dumping ground for failed incarceration policies, building ever larger prisons and disrupting the neighborhood every 40 years.” And something that worries residents is that this will affect businesses in the area and increase the police presence disproportionately. Combined with the criminal court and another nearby federal prison, “Chinatown will be known as Jail Town,” says Jan Lee, a property owner and founder of a group that opposes the development.
The Government responds. Now, it’s not that the city has an interest in bringing prisons to these areas. In the initial program specify that the location of the new Chinatown prison tower responds to a need, since it will be close to the courts, social services and the families of the detainees. Additionally, this jail will have a safer and more humane approach, contributing “positively to the character of the neighborhood and the surrounding streetscape.”
Additionally, as part of the plan, New York will invest $391 million in areas where prisons are located, including funding for affordable housing, recreational spaces, cultural buildings and programs to reduce incarceration. We will see what this prison ends up being, which should begin construction soon if they want the inauguration to be ready for 2027, and we will also see the final height, since there are those who claim that it will be as tall as the Statue of Liberty. Something that is still curious.
Image | ajay_suresh
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#York #building #dystopian #prisonskyscraper #Judge #Dredd
