South Bronx Unite Testimony Submitted to New York City Council’s Committee on Criminal Justice - Nov 2021
South Bronx Unite, a community-led organization in Mott Haven and Port Morris, unequivocally and adamantly opposes the city’s plan to site a new jail at 320 Concord Avenue in the Mott Haven neighborhood of the South Bronx, and we oppose the construction of any new jails in New York City.
The siting of a new jail at 320 Concord Avenue is in direct conflict with locally-driven, grassroots neighborhood efforts to combat decades of disinvestment through the Diego Beekman Neighborhood Plan. The plan focuses on 320 Concord Avenue as a neighborhood hub for housing, commerce, and community space and reflects the decades of organizing and community visioning led by residents to stabilize the Diego Beekman housing complex and surrounding community. See also Diego Beekman Open Letter in Opposition to A New South Bronx Jail.
In New York City’s plan to replace Rikers with smaller facilities, the Bronx is the only borough where a new facility was planned for construction on a historic community site. In Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan, the plan was to renovate the existing jail complexes on the location of the current borough jails, as the city knew that no other community would accept a new jail being built. But in the Bronx, the plan was to expand the footprint of the criminal justice system on new land. And the site being targeted is a lot with deep political and cultural significance as the site of the old Lincoln Hospital, known locally as a “Butcher Shop” and taken over by the Young Lords in 1970 to draw attention to radical inequality in the South Bronx. (See Takeover documentary in the NYT). The community uprising against the new Bronx jail has since inspired other communities that are rejecting neighborhood jail plans, especially after learning that the city changed its plan to renovate with more expensive plans to build brand new jails on the footprint of the current borough detention centers in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens.
NYC’s overinvestment in the criminal justice system stands in stark contrast to its underinvestment in South Bronx community centers, green spaces, living wage jobs and affordable housing. The construction of a new jail to replace Rikers is projected to cost at least $1.1 billion, part of an $8.7 billion city plan to build 4 brand new jails complexes. But even that staggering figure is likely to grow. The new 40th Police Precinct in the South Bronx was originally projected to cost $57.7 million to build, the cost has now ballooned to $68 million. The plan to renovate the Horizon and Crossroads Juvenile Detention Centers to accommodate adolescents from Rikers was expected to cost $170 million but ballooned to $300 million. The new Bronx County Criminal Court that opened in 2007 was projected to cost $325 million but wound up costing $400 million to construct. Yet our community is routinely denied, delayed, and told the resources don’t exist when we ask for the renovation of abandoned buildings to be used for community centers (where not one public community center exists), the creation of green spaces (where we have the lowest per capita access to green space in the city), living wage jobs (where 40% of our families live in poverty), air quality mitigation (when one in five of our kids has asthma and the city subsidizes diesel truck-intensive industries to be sited in our neighborhood), truly affordable housing, and other urgent investments.
New York City’s failure to invest more aggressively in alternatives to incarceration and more restorative ways to deal with crime will not be solved by spending $8.7 billion to build new jails. Over the last 25 years, the city’s jail population has fallen from a high of 21,674 in 1991 to 5,753 as of June 21, 2001, accomplished through a combination of falling crime rates and criminal justice reforms. The plan to replace Rikers assumes a need for 3,300 jail beds in ten year as reforms continue. We challenge the city to come up with a more aggressive plan to further reduce the number of people in jail, thus making the need to construct a new facility unnecessary.
Through a combination of bail reform, decriminalization of minor offenses, and investment in homegrown, community-led alternatives to incarceration like our neighborhood’s own Abraham House and Community Connections for Youth, we believe this is more than possible. Even mayor-elect Eric Adams, who supports Closing Rikers, disagrees with the city’s current plan to build 4 new jails.
We desire more fair, swift, and humane forms of justice for our brothers and sisters in the justice system, and for that reason we applaud the city’s plan to close Rikers Island. However, we will not accept more spending on infrastructure that coerces and controls when our neighborhood is in desperate need of community-driven development. We will not accept a vision for our community that relies on policing and caging people instead of investing in the resources they need to thrive. And we will not accept active undermining of a community’s vision for development following decades of disinvestment, particularly on a site of deep historical significance.
It is for these reasons that we categorically reject the building of a new jail in the South Bronx, and we call on the city to boldly invest its economic resources in people, not prisons.
No new jails - not in the South Bronx, not anywhere!