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BROOKLYN WEEKLY, APRIL 28, 2019
CB2 committee OKs jail plan
Members vote in favor of plan to tear down Atlantic Ave. detention center
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BY KEVIN DUGGAN
Members of Community Board 2’s
Land Use Committee voted in favor
of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan
to tear down Atlantic Avenue’s
House of Detention to make way for
a larger jail in order to close down
Rikers Island.
The committee issued its recommendation
at an April 16 meeting
to accept the city’s proposal to
close the beleaguered jail complex
by 2027 and move its incarcerated
people to four borough-based jails
with several conditions, including
lowering the city’s target population
and cutting the building’s proposed
size by almost half.
The group’s conditions came
from a list of amendments which
the infl uential civic group Brooklyn
Heights Association distributed as
a leafl et at the meeting and which a
member of both the association and
the committee voted to include in the
recommendation.
The conditions are that the city
construct a building slightly more
than half the fl oor area ratio compared
to the city’s proposal, with no
more than 875 incarcerated people
in it, as opposed to 1,437.
The community board also said
that the city must expand its alternative
sentencing programs, create
an improved training facility for
guards, and build a jail on Staten
Island — the only borough exempt
from the mayor’s plan.
Several representatives from
the mayor’s offi ce and the Department
of Correction presented their
plans for the new jail between
Boerum Place and Smith Street
to the committee, similarly to the
community board’s packed public
hearing on April 11.
Many committee members
asked the bureaucrats why they
didn’t readjust their proposal in
light of recent legislative changes
in Albany with one civic guru accusing
the city of trying to strongarm
the local community into accepting
larger jails in order to close
Rikers.
“You’re proposing a building
that — I think by-and-large you’ve
heard from everyone that testifi ed
— is too big,” said Irene Janner.
“You’re trying to fast-track this
and you leave us in a quandary of
do we vote yes and hope you shrink
it, or do we insist you shrink it
now because we know it is not
acceptable as presented.”
State legislators passed a sweeping
package of reforms on April 1,
which will end cash bail and pretrial
detention for almost all misdemeanor
and nonviolent felony
defendants, among other reforms,
and which will reduce the amount
of people awaiting trial in jail because
they can’t afford bail.
The legislation will not come
into effect until Jan. 1, 2020, but
a recent study by the criminal
justice reform advocacy group
the Center for Court Innovation
found that more than two out of
fi ve people detained pretrial in the
fi ve boroughs would have been
released under the new laws.
The mayor’s offi ce launched a
feasibility study to explore moving
mentally ill inmates to hospitals,
which could further reduce the
population in the borough jails, as
fi rst reported by The City.
Brooklyn District Attorney Eric
Gonzalez also announced that his
offi ce would reduce excessive incarceration
under his Justice 2020
plan in March.
A senior representative for the
mayor’s Offi ce of Criminal Justice
Initiatives told the committee
that her team wanted to guarantee
that no one would be left behind on
Rikers Island if the new facilities
ended up being too small, which led
them to aim for 5,000 incarcerated
people in accordance with the 2017
fi ndings of the independent commission
on the city’s incarceration
reform led by Judge Jonathan Lippman.
“We are committed to not leaving
anyone on Rikers Island. So
what we don’t want to do is in trying
to plan for what is not reasonable for
us to achieve while we continue to
push in every way shape and form
that we can to make sure that everybody
we can get out of detention is
in community-based supervision or
not in the justice system,” said Dana
Kaplan.
HOUSE OF YES: Community Board 2’s
Land Use Committee issued its recommendation
at a recent meeting to accept
the city’s proposal to close Rikers
Island, which will mean changes for
the Brooklyn House of Detention.
Photo by Zoe Freilich
/www.AntiqueAndEstateBuyers.com
/www.AntiqueAndEstateBuyers.com