Kimberly Fong

Volume 26.2 (download PDF)

Abstract

New York City will soon have the distinction of constructing one of the tallest jails—if not the tallest—in the world. The jail will be a new addition to New York City’s skyline at 295 feet tall, even taller than Chicago’s Metropolitan Correctional Center. As part of former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan to close Rikers Island as a detention center, this jail is part of the Borough-Based Jail Program intended to accommodate a smaller jail population in four smaller jails located in the Bronx, Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens. The impetus for closing Rikers came in part from increased concern that pretrial detention has a disproportionately harmful impact on Black and Latinx people. Former U.S. attorney Preet Bharara’s report on abuses of detainees by Rikers staff put the public on greater notice of the conditions at Rikers. High-profile deaths, such as Kalief Browder’s death by suicide after his three-year detention for allegedly stealing a backpack and Layleen Polanco’s death after suffering an epileptic seizure in solitary confinement, further put a spotlight on Rikers’s culture of abuse against detainees. Under this plan, the massive “mega jail” or “jailscraper” will replace the Manhattan Detention Complex in Manhattan’s historic Chinatown.

Despite the emphasis on closing Rikers as a matter of racial and criminal justice for Black and Latinx people, the Borough-Based Jail Plan is the result of a flawed land use approval process. Mayor de Blasio’s administration appeared to choose to locate the Manhattan-based jail in a minority neighborhood that would not be able to politically resist the City’s decision to only consider two locations in Chinatown. Mayor de Blasio framed building the Manhattan mega jail in Chinatown as part and parcel of closing Rikers, creating a false dilemma between (1) building the jail to carry out a criminal justice priority for Black and Brown communities, or (2) doing nothing at all to pursue racial justice or criminal justice reform. It appeared easier for de Blasio’s administration to proclaim success implementing “criminal justice reform” for Black and Brown communities than to invest in those communities to help reduce high rates of criminalization. The plan harms Asian Americans by disregarding the history and importance of Chinatown for Asian Americans, as well as the local community’s concerns about the mega jail’s significant impacts on the neighborhood and the health of Chinatown’s residents and workers. This Article analyzes and critiques how the City approved the mega jail step by step.