Organized Opposition to House of D Plan Grows
Dozens of Boerum Hill stores and lampposts have started sporting “Stop the Jail” posters, markers of a new group’s efforts to protest the city’s plan to reopen and expand the House of Detention on Smith and Atlantic. The group, Stop BHOD, has launched a website saying it’s comprised of residents from the Brooklyn Heights, Boerum…
Dozens of Boerum Hill stores and lampposts have started sporting “Stop the Jail” posters, markers of a new group’s efforts to protest the city’s plan to reopen and expand the House of Detention on Smith and Atlantic. The group, Stop BHOD, has launched a website saying it’s comprised of residents from the Brooklyn Heights, Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill, and Carroll Gardens neighborhoods. Stop BHOD’s mission is twofold, according to the site: “Stop BHOD strongly opposes the reopening and expansion of the BHOD. We have made it our mission to stop the misguided plan to place a large prison in a thriving neighborhood with a large community of young children. We have also made it our mission to expose the inaccuracies of the Department of Corrections, a city agency more concerned with control over the site than with economics and the best interests of the community and city as a whole.” Among other things, the group says Corrections is planning a jail with cells that don’t “meet minimum federal or state standards of habitability. Some cells are 40 square feet, half the 80 sqaure foot size recommended by the American Correctional Association.” In March, an entity called the Brooklyn HOD Community Stakeholders Group launched that also opposes the jail expansion.
Stop BHOD [Official Site]
Brooklyn HOD Community Stakeholders Group [Official Site]
‘Stop the Jail’ Movement Begins on Atlantic Ave. [Brooklyn Eagle]
Locals Put Heat On City For Ignoring House of D Plan [Brownstoner]
City Looks to Supersize the House of D [Brownstoner]
bxgrl
Spare us the grit and reality lecture. The renovations to the facility were incompetently performed and did nothing to correct the size of the cells. Who says it has to go in a poorer hood,
So the t’What woudl be a resident of Brooklyn Heights?!
7:24, true. Rikers Island (so I’ve heard) is a schlep. Before everyone piles on me for saying “but these are offenders and life is tough” I’d point out that the visitors are not offenders but people close to them; why make them suffer more?
5:59 (who I presume is also 4:51 & 4:03 though its impossible to tell for sure since you don’t have the cojones to make yourself uniquely identifiable): So, does my post say that I took my son to see shackled prisoners to entertain him? No. Does it say I even did it at all? No. Does it say that if he had requested to see them I would have obliged? Absolutely. In bringing up my kids I felt that their curiosity with regard to all things, whether intellectual, popular culture-related, or sensational deserved to be satisfied. I felt that a child who experiences all things in which they express an interest (barring those very likely to result in physical harm), whether at the “high” or the “low” end of the socio-cultural scale, would benefit from that experience and grow up with the tools to make wiser decisions about his/her life than would be the case if he/she led a youthful life sheltered from the realities of the world. And with two well adjusted kids, one graduated and gainfully employed and another doing very well in college, I don’t think my “parenting 101” has turned out so bad.
Your bringing this thread to such a gutter level of personal attack makes me feel perfectly entitled to wish your children (if indeed you have any) the best of luck when their lack of street smarts / fear of the unknown / ignorance of other social classes and cultures results in events that damage them.
I don’t agree with them on this issue, but most of the anti-HOD stakeholders group have lived in the neighborhood for a long time. A looooong, looooong, time: Sue Wolfe, Boerum Hill Association; Heloise Gruenberg, Brooklyn Vision; Sandy Balboza, AABA; Ian Kelly, AALDC. It’s inaccurate and unfair to call them arrivistes.
It makes no sense to try and relocate the jail. DOC should just open it as is and also look for another location to accommodate the inmates – they are called inmates – that they will need to move off of Riker’s Island. Riker’s Island is extremely inaccessible for family, lawyers, volunteers and others who need to visit and provide services for the inmates. Waiting for inmates to be transported via bus to court costs the city millions in gas, vehicle maintenance and overtime. True that many of the inmates would still have to transported by bus from State street to the new court building, but it would take less time and resources to get them there from the Brooklyn House on Atlantic.
Originally the plan was to expand the facilities on Riker’s Island but Hurricane Katrina and other emergencies taught the city a huge lesson. The Island is in the East River accessible only by one two lane bridge and is way below sea level. In heavy rain storms, the old decrepit jails flood. What do you think would happen in a hurricane? There would be no way to evacuate all of the inmates and employees. Even if they did, where would they then evacuate them to? Are the lives of the people on the island despensible?
Afterall they are just inmates and oh Correction Officers who are not the NYPD and therefore not paid to protect and serve the public according to one poster. To the knucklehead who said that they don’t feel safer with Correction Officers around, look up the definition of Peace Officer. I personally don’t care which uniform responds to my needs in an emergency as long as someone responds.
DT Brooklyn is a transit hub. Many of the detainees at HOD are poor lower class and this makes travel less complicated for their families and enables easy access to the Public Defenders. these aren’t the most lucrative cases so could you imagine if they had to truck out to ENY or Sunset Park just to carry out some basic procedures.
5:37- well they did studies of selling it, putting in retail, all sorts of alternative plans. When they closed most of it down, they said it was because the population had decreased. but with very little money to simply replace the facility, and needing more room, it makes little economic sense to forget the HOd and go elsewhere. especially after spending so much money to renovate it.
And what’s the alternative? putting it in some other, sure to be poorer neighborhood, which already has more than its fair share of shelters and facilities? And what happens in any neighborhood that decides something offends its delicate sensibilities? Battery park City and CB1 don’t want to look out over a “cemetery” at Ground Zero, or artifacts. Close to 3000 people died there,but so as not to offend them, the LMDC committee picked the blandest, most inoffensive and meaningless design they could so it looks like a pretty park. That’s damn offensive.
New York City is about grit and reality. This isn’t a disney theme park- it’s the real deal and if that means the neighborhood has to tolerate the HOD, so be it. The prisoners are isolated inside, there are police everywhere, there is no history of outbreaks and gangs of desperate escapees running a muck.
They verbally harass people? Awwwww- they’re locked up, people. Ignore it. It’s not like you have to stand there and listen.
Parenting 101 from Johnife
“I don’t remember the situation actually arising, but I’m certain that if my son, when he was 11 years old or so, had been aware of the opportunity to see shackled criminals in the flesh he would have begged me to take him down that block to “see the bad guys” and there’s no way I would have denied him that vicarious thrill.
Posted by: johnife at June 17, 2008 2:39 PM