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New Yorker here. If this happens, great, but ysk that building those replacements jails is a knock-down drag out fight on the local level. Even renovating/repla

New Yorker here. If this happens, great, but ysk that building those replacements jails is a knock-down drag out fight on the local level. Even renovating/replacing an existing jail in my neighborhood is being opposed by people that literally want to get rid of jails altogether. Literally, we can't close the terrible, poorly run jail (Rikers) because some people don't want jails at all. So take this article with an enormous grain of salt. And ymmv, but articles that simultaneously play to green energy projects (good thing) and carceral reform (good thing, more complicated in reality) are likely high-minded click-bait.

codyb 4y ago
Yea, this rings really true, and it's pretty frustrating that we can't do anything about Rikers cause of it. The abolish prisons before neighborhoods are actually safe thing is... ridiculous. You have to uplift the communities before you can have a jail free system. You can't just jump straight to jail free. Most of the "abolish prison" types appear to be the super left wing which is like.... not a lot of NYC and mostly concentrated in Manhattan (hence Adam's win in all the other boroughs). I'm hoping, if done well, and with out treating minorities like shit, that the NYPD being all over the subway will be effective in making NYers feel safe on the subway again (I think the crime wave was a bit overblown but it did get a bit seedier for sure), and maybe get the NYPD and the communities to a decent place. That'd be a nice win for the city.
- asdff 4y ago
  I don't get why people aren't arguing to just convert jails instead of shutting them down. If there is a lot of demand for people with mental health issues and not a lot of people who truly need to be behind bars, then just convert the jail property into an asylum. Whether you operate with mainly jails or mainly asylums you still need public land and facilities and jails are frankly a good site to store sensitive people. If you shut down jails before you build these asylums then you now have to go to the market and try and get land together for these things, and we have seen what an enormous hurdle that has been for governments undertaking those efforts At least with the subway in LA the way the cops currently patrol it is pretty useless. I've seen four cops talking amongst themselves about 100 feet just on the other side of a stairwell from where someone was using a creme brule torch to light up a glass pipe for their buddy in the middle of the train platform. I see hard drugs smoked probably once or twice a week and I'm going during the 9-5, I can't imagine how much more is smoked during off peak hours when the stations are much more dead. It seems like subway security is better solved by just having someone sit in a room looking at all the camera feeds in the station (there are already cameras everywhere on every corner but evidently they aren't used for much), seeing when someone is clearly hitting a crack rock or prying into a maintenance power outlet, and sending someone down to respond to what was seen on the video feed just now. Otherwise, people aren't dumb, they will just quiet down when they see a cop and start acting out again as soon as the cop is out of sight or earshot. Cops will also not care to do anything unless they literally saw it occur in front of their eyes, so having them be directed by a video operator at least serves as a record.
  - codyb 4y ago
    Hmm, yea, the drug stuff seems a lot worse out West. I'm sure there are people openly doing drugs in NYC but they must be way out in the outer boroughs. You'll see people strung out a bit sometimes in Midtown though. But it's nothing like the Tenderloin in San Francisco.
    - asdff 4y ago
      It really just comes from a lack of any enforcement of that sort of use in public. I mean its 5pm in downtown LA, hundreds of people are at 7th street metro center station trying to get home from work, and 1/3rd of the heavy rail line platform has people looking straight forward not trying to make eye contact with the people actively smoking rocks on the benches behind them. It's ridiculous. I've seen everyone from custodial workers to actual uniformed metro security just turn around and pretend like they aren't seeing what they are seeing. Not even a report or a warning for these people to leave the station or public park, just a "not my job, not my problem" attitude which is a shame that its come to that, and inevitably makes the job of custodial worker or security guard so much harder when they allow people engaging in these behaviors free reign to continue these behaviors. You look in the rail gutter of the station and there are probably hundreds of used needles. It seems like cops in California at least are pretty ambivalent about doing any sort of petty policing, in stark contrast to the cops out east. Here in California I've never seen anyone pulled over on the highways at all. Meanwhile out east, I know people who've been pulled over for going a few mph over, or hanging out in the left lane too long, or "swerving" allegedly, and going on to see their vehicles searched with their possessions tossed to the side of the road like they are at a gestapo checkpoint. If they are walking outside late at night the cop rolls up slow and follows them for some time, then flicks their lights on to ask them where they think they are heading at this time, hoping to stick a public intoxication charge or follow up on a warrant presumably. There's definitely some happy medium between not enforcing the law at all and having a fascist power complex to ruin people's lives using the law, and I hope saner times in the future strike that balance.
- jakelazaroff 4y ago
  So far the NYPD subway surge has basically been working as well as predicted: utterly failing to address violence, while criminalizing people of color for low-level offenses [1]. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-04/is-it-safe-to-ride-the-new-york-city-subway-after-a-surge-of-more-police https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-04/is-it-saf...
  - codyb 4y ago
    This seems to be talking about a much larger span of time. The recent push has been in the last few weeks to a month. We'll see if it's any different this time. I think it's in response to the uptick described in that article. Sucks if you jump a turnstile in front of a police officer, they'll certainly stop you for that stuff.
ch4s3 4y ago
This is what has absolutely killed me about NYC politics. NIMBYs, left extremists, and some right wing nut bags all form a sick coalition that cements the status quo on so many important issues. We can’t close Rikers because NIMBYs veto new smaller jail locations, prison abolitionists also block them, and law and order types want Rikers to stay open. We can’t build housing because NIMBYs block new development, DSA types hate any private development and fight it, and the narrow slice ultra-conservative types don’t want the mandatory affordable units … It’s just awful, and we can’t have nice things as a result. [*EDIT] It's funny that people will reflexively downvote this because they identify with a political camp that I'm complaining about but won't offer a dissenting opinion. I'm happy to get into specific example of great projects that have been hobbled by these various groups.
- kridsdale2 4y ago
  What you're describing is our national problem. People are more aligned with either extreme than they used to be (likely due to the internet exposing people to echo chambers), and are less tolerant of "giving the enemy a win" by collaborating to do SOMETHING. So stasis and hate are the outcome. Example: I agree with Republicans on some things, like prosecuting thieves which my local (Seattle) Democrats don't care about. But if I were to publicly state my interest in anything right-aligned, my peers would round me all the way up and think I hate women or something.
  - ch4s3 4y ago
    I'm not really describing a national scenario, but some NYC specific conditions. For example the much vaunted AOC has personally intervened to kill 2 redevelopment projects that were broadly supported by neighbors and local community boards by whipping local DSA activists up and threatening council members and bringing the NIMBYs out who were already against any new development. Rikers is another example where the prison abolitionists are coming together with law and order types who like Rikers. It makes no sense for these leftist prions abolitionists to partner with MAGA types in Staten Island but here we are.
dj_mc_merlin 4y ago
> literally want to get rid of jails altogether We obviously need some jails, but at the same time your incarceration rate in NYC is 5x higher than my city. Would reducing jail sentence terms and providing some leniency at sentencing not be an option? Is everybody just a hardened criminal over there? edit: I know you mention this > carceral reform (good thing, more complicated in reality) It's obviously not as simple as just "reduce jail terms", but it seems like the thing to demand when your government is jailing such a huge amount of the population comparatively. Even when you compare against 3rd world and authoritarian countries it's just too large of a number -- it can't be that the Americans are just built so they commit crime more. Why would you not want more of your citizens to live fuller, more accomplished lives rather than rotting in shitty prisons?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- weberer 4y ago
  You can't just compare the incarceration rate without also comparing the violent crime rate.
- jelling 4y ago
  Your comment is a perfect example of what I was trying to head off: people that... - don't live here (it appears you live in Europe?) - don't know anything about the local politics - don't want to listen when anyone tries to tell them - don't know much about the justice system (including the difference between jail vs prison) - use ham-fisted statistics like national incarceration rates but... - don't account for enormous variables (hint: guns), or... - weighting of prior sentences (it's a rolling average obviously) But surprise! they want to squeeze every story into a large conversation so they can take the moral high ground against straw man arguments no one was making. Like this one: > Why would you not want more of your citizens to live fuller, more accomplished lives rather than rotting in shitty prisons? You took time out of your day to write that comment to some that told you they supported carceral reform. Heck, you even quoted me saying that I wanted carceral reform and thought "Nah, this guy needs my input about on whether we should let people rot in prison." Here's a policy recommendation: don't run your mouth on topics you don't know much about. Greetings from New York.

codyb 4y ago

Yea, this rings really true, and it's pretty frustrating that we can't do anything about Rikers cause of it. The abolish prisons before neighborhoods are actually safe thing is... ridiculous. You have to uplift the communities before you can have a jail free system. You can't just jump straight to jail free. Most of the "abolish prison" types appear to be the super left wing which is like.... not a lot of NYC and mostly concentrated in Manhattan (hence Adam's win in all the other boroughs). I'm hoping, if done well, and with out treating minorities like shit, that the NYPD being all over the subway will be effective in making NYers feel safe on the subway again (I think the crime wave was a bit overblown but it did get a bit seedier for sure), and maybe get the NYPD and the communities to a decent place. That'd be a nice win for the city.

asdff 4y ago
I don't get why people aren't arguing to just convert jails instead of shutting them down. If there is a lot of demand for people with mental health issues and not a lot of people who truly need to be behind bars, then just convert the jail property into an asylum. Whether you operate with mainly jails or mainly asylums you still need public land and facilities and jails are frankly a good site to store sensitive people. If you shut down jails before you build these asylums then you now have to go to the market and try and get land together for these things, and we have seen what an enormous hurdle that has been for governments undertaking those efforts At least with the subway in LA the way the cops currently patrol it is pretty useless. I've seen four cops talking amongst themselves about 100 feet just on the other side of a stairwell from where someone was using a creme brule torch to light up a glass pipe for their buddy in the middle of the train platform. I see hard drugs smoked probably once or twice a week and I'm going during the 9-5, I can't imagine how much more is smoked during off peak hours when the stations are much more dead. It seems like subway security is better solved by just having someone sit in a room looking at all the camera feeds in the station (there are already cameras everywhere on every corner but evidently they aren't used for much), seeing when someone is clearly hitting a crack rock or prying into a maintenance power outlet, and sending someone down to respond to what was seen on the video feed just now. Otherwise, people aren't dumb, they will just quiet down when they see a cop and start acting out again as soon as the cop is out of sight or earshot. Cops will also not care to do anything unless they literally saw it occur in front of their eyes, so having them be directed by a video operator at least serves as a record.
- codyb 4y ago
  Hmm, yea, the drug stuff seems a lot worse out West. I'm sure there are people openly doing drugs in NYC but they must be way out in the outer boroughs. You'll see people strung out a bit sometimes in Midtown though. But it's nothing like the Tenderloin in San Francisco.
  - asdff 4y ago
    It really just comes from a lack of any enforcement of that sort of use in public. I mean its 5pm in downtown LA, hundreds of people are at 7th street metro center station trying to get home from work, and 1/3rd of the heavy rail line platform has people looking straight forward not trying to make eye contact with the people actively smoking rocks on the benches behind them. It's ridiculous. I've seen everyone from custodial workers to actual uniformed metro security just turn around and pretend like they aren't seeing what they are seeing. Not even a report or a warning for these people to leave the station or public park, just a "not my job, not my problem" attitude which is a shame that its come to that, and inevitably makes the job of custodial worker or security guard so much harder when they allow people engaging in these behaviors free reign to continue these behaviors. You look in the rail gutter of the station and there are probably hundreds of used needles. It seems like cops in California at least are pretty ambivalent about doing any sort of petty policing, in stark contrast to the cops out east. Here in California I've never seen anyone pulled over on the highways at all. Meanwhile out east, I know people who've been pulled over for going a few mph over, or hanging out in the left lane too long, or "swerving" allegedly, and going on to see their vehicles searched with their possessions tossed to the side of the road like they are at a gestapo checkpoint. If they are walking outside late at night the cop rolls up slow and follows them for some time, then flicks their lights on to ask them where they think they are heading at this time, hoping to stick a public intoxication charge or follow up on a warrant presumably. There's definitely some happy medium between not enforcing the law at all and having a fascist power complex to ruin people's lives using the law, and I hope saner times in the future strike that balance.
jakelazaroff 4y ago
So far the NYPD subway surge has basically been working as well as predicted: utterly failing to address violence, while criminalizing people of color for low-level offenses [1]. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-04/is-it-safe-to-ride-the-new-york-city-subway-after-a-surge-of-more-police https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-04/is-it-saf...
- codyb 4y ago
  This seems to be talking about a much larger span of time. The recent push has been in the last few weeks to a month. We'll see if it's any different this time. I think it's in response to the uptick described in that article. Sucks if you jump a turnstile in front of a police officer, they'll certainly stop you for that stuff.

ch4s3 4y ago

This is what has absolutely killed me about NYC politics. NIMBYs, left extremists, and some right wing nut bags all form a sick coalition that cements the status quo on so many important issues. We can’t close Rikers because NIMBYs veto new smaller jail locations, prison abolitionists also block them, and law and order types want Rikers to stay open. We can’t build housing because NIMBYs block new development, DSA types hate any private development and fight it, and the narrow slice ultra-conservative types don’t want the mandatory affordable units … It’s just awful, and we can’t have nice things as a result. [*EDIT] It's funny that people will reflexively downvote this because they identify with a political camp that I'm complaining about but won't offer a dissenting opinion. I'm happy to get into specific example of great projects that have been hobbled by these various groups.

kridsdale2 4y ago
What you're describing is our national problem. People are more aligned with either extreme than they used to be (likely due to the internet exposing people to echo chambers), and are less tolerant of "giving the enemy a win" by collaborating to do SOMETHING. So stasis and hate are the outcome. Example: I agree with Republicans on some things, like prosecuting thieves which my local (Seattle) Democrats don't care about. But if I were to publicly state my interest in anything right-aligned, my peers would round me all the way up and think I hate women or something.
- ch4s3 4y ago
  I'm not really describing a national scenario, but some NYC specific conditions. For example the much vaunted AOC has personally intervened to kill 2 redevelopment projects that were broadly supported by neighbors and local community boards by whipping local DSA activists up and threatening council members and bringing the NIMBYs out who were already against any new development. Rikers is another example where the prison abolitionists are coming together with law and order types who like Rikers. It makes no sense for these leftist prions abolitionists to partner with MAGA types in Staten Island but here we are.

dj_mc_merlin 4y ago

> literally want to get rid of jails altogether We obviously need some jails, but at the same time your incarceration rate in NYC is 5x higher than my city. Would reducing jail sentence terms and providing some leniency at sentencing not be an option? Is everybody just a hardened criminal over there? edit: I know you mention this > carceral reform (good thing, more complicated in reality) It's obviously not as simple as just "reduce jail terms", but it seems like the thing to demand when your government is jailing such a huge amount of the population comparatively. Even when you compare against 3rd world and authoritarian countries it's just too large of a number -- it can't be that the Americans are just built so they commit crime more. Why would you not want more of your citizens to live fuller, more accomplished lives rather than rotting in shitty prisons?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
weberer 4y ago
You can't just compare the incarceration rate without also comparing the violent crime rate.
jelling 4y ago
Your comment is a perfect example of what I was trying to head off: people that... - don't live here (it appears you live in Europe?) - don't know anything about the local politics - don't want to listen when anyone tries to tell them - don't know much about the justice system (including the difference between jail vs prison) - use ham-fisted statistics like national incarceration rates but... - don't account for enormous variables (hint: guns), or... - weighting of prior sentences (it's a rolling average obviously) But surprise! they want to squeeze every story into a large conversation so they can take the moral high ground against straw man arguments no one was making. Like this one: > Why would you not want more of your citizens to live fuller, more accomplished lives rather than rotting in shitty prisons? You took time out of your day to write that comment to some that told you they supported carceral reform. Heck, you even quoted me saying that I wanted carceral reform and thought "Nah, this guy needs my input about on whether we should let people rot in prison." Here's a policy recommendation: don't run your mouth on topics you don't know much about. Greetings from New York.