Will Chinatown’s borough-based jail save lives or destroy them?

Black lives and White Street fuel two separate conversations about the same issue: This month’s end marks exactly three years before the city’s mandate to close Rikers Island comes into effect.

A citywide effort to hold the Adams administration to the shutdown’s 2027 deadline as Black New Yorkers continue to die in or after custody. But the solution plops a replacement “ethical”  jail in Chinatown, a neighborhood of color often left to fend for itself as the city’s “dumping ground.” 

“It’s just a lack of two communities seeing eye to eye and I’m lost in how to make it happen,” said organizer Five Mualimm-ak. “We [held] council meetings, and we wanted the community’s input, and it just turned into yelling matches, rallies that (were) fighting each other…every part of this jail is tearing New York apart.”

The lot at 124-25 White Street is likely to hold the world’s tallest jail by the time construction concludes, but currently isn’t much to look at. A crane, backhoe, and pile of rubble, surrounded by fencing and green tarp, is all there is to show for this multibillion dollar project so far. 

Unsurprisingly, Chinatown residents are not happy. This isn’t the first detention facility built in the neighborhood, so resistance expands far beyond a simple stigma against jails. 

The proposed 295-foot-tall building symbolizes the continued disinvestment in an ethnoburb hit hard by 9/11’s toxic aftermath, Hurricane Sandy’s destruction, and COVID-19–fueled racism for many residents. Other concerns are more immediate, such as current construction damaging neighboring businesses and residences. And the jail will stand as an expansion to mass incarceration, casting a long shadow across the famous neighborhood. 

“For Chinatown, it’s gotten pretty diverse [with] different perspectives,” said Beatrice Chen, executive director of Immigrant Social Services (ISS). “Some [aspects] are more progressive, and then some are more immediate, like the noise. How do we navigate that amongst our own community? There’s so many issues that we may conflate or not unpack. 

“For us and Chinatown, the borough-based jail [is many] stories. But that means Columbus Park is going to be shrouded in darkness.”

If height were everything in New York City, Krishaps Porzingis would still be a Knick. The construction of Chinatown’s “jailscraper” is supposed to reduce the city’s jail population as one of four borough-based facilities designated to replace the infamous 400-acre Rikers Island complex by 2027. They will each detain a maximum of 1,040 people, factoring in a recent increase of beds. Comparatively, the Anna M. Kross Center, formerly Rikers’ biggest jail, could hold up to 2,106 people alone before closure last August, according to a DOC spokesperson.

Currently four detention facilities—the Eric M. Taylor Center, George R. Vierno Center, Otis Bantum Correctional Center, and Robert N. Davoren Center—each hold more than 1,000 people on “any given day” on Rikers Island. 

Many criminal justice reform advocates are counting the borough-based jails to address the city’s mounting carceral problems. Dana Kaplan, a senior advisor for the Lippman Commission, the task force assigned by the city to tackle Rikers’ closure, said initial neighborhood pushback led to lowering the jail’s original planned height limit from 450 feet to 295 feet. She said any further reductions would affect services. 

“The point is to not cram individuals in; the point is to to develop facilities that actually have program space, smaller housing units, individual rooms, as opposed to smaller dorms or removing programs or the types of things that really could remove square footage, but would be in conflict with the other reform objectives,” said Kaplan. 

Land before (building) time

124-25 White Street sits on what was once lush Lenape land. It’s hard to imagine anywhere in Lower Manhattan described as “bucolic” or “pastoral” these days, but early European accounts described a freshwater lake surrounded by verdant vegetation where Chinatown is located today, according to Dave Favaloro, the Tenement Museum’s senior director of curatorial affairs. 

As the colonizers sank their claws deeper into the area over time and began developing New York City northward, green turned to gray. 

Out of sight, out of mind and used as a dumping ground, not unlike the story of Rikers Island, the area—known as Collect Pond—became a vector of cholera and other diseases by the 1800s. The city built a canal to drain the polluted water. The waterway was later paved over and the city’s affluent eyed the newly minted Canal Street for luxury development two centuries before the boutiques and galleries of SoHo existed. They called it Paradise Square.

Segregated by class more than race, the neighborhood became a staging ground for middle-class reformers to address formative social movements in public health and environmental protection. The neighborhood also became the first stop for many immigrant groups, including the Southern Chinese. Nine Chinatowns exist in New York City today, but Manhattan Chinatown remains the Chinatown, thanks to its history. 

A jail—the New York Halls of Justice and House of Detention—was built in 1838. Locals dubbed it “the Tombs” on account of its Egyptian-inspired architecture. The nickname was inherited by three other detention centers built on or around 124-25 White Street in the 20th century, including the immediate predecessor to the borough-based jail.

Today, Collect Pond Park remains as evidence of the once-freshwater supply, across from the criminal courts where reporters and protesters often gather for major cases like former President Donald Trump’s conviction over hush-money charges. 

The horrors of “Torture Island”

Rikers Island sits above a defunct landfill, surrounded by the East River, in the joint custody of Queens and the Bronx. Most New York City jails are found here. Just one MTA bus line, the Q100, crosses the bridge separating the complex from the rest of the Big Apple. A Department of Corrections- (DOC-) run bus shuttles visitors from Harlem and Downtown Brooklyn to Rikers.

Mayor Bill DeBlasio pledged to close Rikers Island back in 2017 after public support and advocacy championed by Campaign to Close Rikers organizations like Freedom Agenda. The jails were too old, too far out, and too dangerous, said the electeds, advocates, and legal professionals who developed the plan to replace the complex with a “more humane” facility in each borough, except Staten Island. 

Three facilities would be placed right next to the criminal courts, so detainees could be efficiently transported to their hearings and remain more accessible to their attorneys, particularly overworked public defenders. A fourth, in the Bronx, would be a 10–15 minute drive from the county criminal courts. 

Building designs boasted an emphasis on “dignity and respect,” a departure from the cold, damp halls of Rikers Island. Ample space would be carved out for healthcare, education, and recreation, preparing the people held inside for rehabilitation, reentry, and, when needed, treatment. 

Meanwhile, the city would need to decarcerate—release people—to meet the significantly lower borough-based jail population cap of 3,300, even though it was recently raised to 4,160. 

Once the city moves the jail population from Rikers, the land would be transferred to the Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS) no later than August 31, 2027. The island would be reappropriated toward “sustainability and resiliency” through environmental justice research. 

When the city committed to closing Rikers seven years ago, the jails’ human cost fueled the decision. Conditions led to a class-action settlement in 2015, leading to multiple court-ordered reforms and the appointment of a federal monitor to oversee them. Reports back then described both detainees and jail staff facing and perpetuating a “culture of violence.” Solitary confinement left many traumatized, including teenager Kalief Browder, who took his life a year after he was released from a three-year detainment on charges for stealing a backpack that he was never convicted of. Inhumane conditions also stemmed from the jails’ themselves. 

“The majority of weapons that are made at Rikers are literally coming from materials that are pulled from dilapidated buildings,” said Kaplan. “It’s unacceptable for people who are incarcerated and for correctional staff.” 

Today, similar issues persist. An overwhelming majority of the 32 people to die in or immediately after DOC custody during the Adams administration were held on Rikers Island. All but one were not listed as white in the agency’s “Inmate Lookup” search. 

Campaigning to close Rikers

Some see the horrors of Rikers Island as unique and exceptional, and that the city’s best shot ending those inhuman conditions is through the borough-based jails. 

Ashley Santiago, senior community organizer at Freedom Agenda, said her nephew’s detainment on Rikers led her to advocate for the plan. 

“Changing people’s environment will do a whole lot, because the borough-based jails will be closer, visitation will be up, and that will also bring violence down,” she said. “When people feel loved and happy and they just saw their loved one and they’re living in that emotion instead of just torture all day, which leads to more violence…” 

She recalled that “…the only time lawyers would talk to my nephew was at court dates. I would ask them, ‘You don’t go see him on Rikers?’ And they would scoff, like, ‘I’m not going to Rikers.’”

Borough-based jail proponents see the placement next to courthouses, like in Chinatown, as necessary. After all, most detainees are held on Rikers pre-trial—innocent before proven guilty and solely to ensure they show up for their court appearances. A sally port in the new facilities would allow direct transport from the jails to the courts in Chinatown. 

Mualimm-ak, who spent 12 years on Rikers, said a borough-based jail would have allowed him to see his kids more frequently, interact with his lawyers more, and facilitate a speedier trial. 

“All of these things are what we’re promising them—no one is getting[them]  on Rikers right now,” he said. “No one is getting [them] until we build a humane facility.”

A chicken-or-the-egg scenario uniquely affects the Manhattan site—the neighborhoods are selected because the facilities need to be placed near the courts. 

Kaplan said addressing community concerns and closing Rikers are not mutually exclusive. 

“One can both believe that the presence of the detention facility in Chinatown—much like there has historically been a jail in that location—is not going to be devastating to the neighborhood, and still take very seriously what all the community issues are that people are identifying and seeking help with at the same time,” said Kaplan. “I don’t think it needs to nor should be an either/or question of do we support the right closure of Rikers or do we support the needs of the Chinatown community?”

Santiago said that lost in the Chinatown jail conversation are justice-impacted people and their families. The Queens native also noticed an absence of other Black and Brown people at the table, despite those two racial demographics making up roughly 90% of those held in city jails. She left the Chinatown jail design meeting the “angriest” she’s ever been, feeling like people were more concerned about DOC’s gardening policies than the deaths on Rikers. 

“They’re making [a] commotion, but nothing is happening,” said Santiago. “They’re not doing anything to save the people on Rikers.”

The many opinions fueling Chinatown’s resistance

Neighbors Below Canal co-founder Jan Lee argues tackling the city’s mess falls unfairly into Chinatown’s lap as the neighborhood continues to reel from disinvestment. The third-generation resident questioned the viability of moving Rikers’ personnel problems inland. 

“It’s beyond my comprehension why people have sudden faith in the Department of Corrections today,” said Lee. “There’s a leap of faith that one has to take, given the entire history of incarceration in New York and how it’s gotten to this point that you’re not transferring the horrors of Rikers Island into four separate communities.”

W.O.W. Project organizer and researcher Denise Zhou sees Rikers Island as a symptom of a “history of incarceration that has always been a history of reform.”

“The plan was proposed as a solution to closing Rikers, and Rikers certainly should be closed,” said Zhou. “Rikers has always had a really terrible reputation as a facility, but you look at the history of any jail in New York…the narrative built around Rikers is the same narrative that has been ascribed to every single jail in New York. Look at the Tombs, for example—the Tombs was regarded as this horrible place and people wanted it shut down. 

“There was also the New York Women’s House of Detention in the West Village—a jail that was really integrated into the neighborhood…this is a story that has happened over and over and over again. The way that the city government has handled incarceration and carceral expansion has always been to close down a jail and build a new one.”

In both cases, the city moved the existing detainee populations to Rikers. Ironically, previous Chinatown movements against jail plans secured 88 units of low-income senior housing known as Chung Pak. Yet the same center, adjacent to the borough-based jail site, now faces the brunt of the earth-shaking vibrations from when the city-contracted Gramercy Group demolished the previous facilities at 124-25 White Street. A massive crack was left on the first floor. Many residents have told Beatrice Chen, whose office is in the same building, that they cannot move out.

But more than a series of bridges separate Chinatown from Rikers Island, said Chen.

“We don’t really talk about Rikers’ closure,” said Chen. “It’s really more focused on this jail, but then it is actually all tied [together], because this wouldn’t have happened if Rikers didn’t fall to that. But for us, it’s human nature for what is right in front of us.”

Lee said educating locals often starts on the ground floor. 

“We have to tell people the difference between a prison and a jail, so that it starts from that very basic level,” said Lee. “You get people saying, ‘We don’t want prisoners running around,’ and you have to start with the idea first that these are detainees. Two-thirds of the people haven’t had their day in court yet. These are not proven to be dangerous people. I just want to set the stage for how basic the conversation has to be from our perspective.”

Joe Chan is one of the few with open connections to both the neighborhood and the city’s carceral system. The long-time Chinatown resident formerly worked with re-entry nonprofit Friends of Island Academy (now Youth Justice Network) and still carries his DOC clearance badge with him. He said he’s generally against the closure of Rikers, pointing to similar arguments made by Lee about the DOC.

“Chinatown is a political mulching box,” he said. “We’re like every community’s dumping ground…if you close Rikers, all the corruption and all the mismanagement—it’ll be like a giant, contaminated petri dish. And we’re just gonna smear it and let’s take all of this stuff and put it in the Manhattan mega-jail.”

Will reality stop the borough-based jail before Chinatown can?

The city initially planned on closing Rikers by 2026, but officially postponed the deadline by a year back in 2020. 

Now the borough-based jail plan will almost certainly kick the can down the road again. Last year, a public notice revealed the contract to construct the Brooklyn facility would run past 2029, as first reported by the New York Daily News. This year, city records showed even deeper delays for the Bronx and Queens borough-based jails. The jury remains out on when Chinatown’s facility gets built. 

These delays do not come as a surprise to the plan’s proponents. NYC Comptroller Brad Lander expected such news during a March interview with the Amsterdam News. He still believes borough-based jails are the best option. 

“If we don’t meet those deadlines, then Rikers Island is gonna stay open longer than we wanted to, but we still are better off moving forward to get it closed on the fastest timeline we reasonably can,” said Lander. “Look, no one wants to build a jail—everyone would rather use resources for parks and schools and libraries. But as part of a system that’s designed to keep people safe, you have to be able to have a humane and effective approach, and that’s not what Rikers is. 

“The decision was made to build facilities nearer to the courts that can hold people awaiting trial…near to the court where their case is being processed and closer to where families could come to visit them. That’s why the borough-based jails [are] the right way to go.”

There’s also the matter of the facilities themselves, once intended as the antithesis of the overcrowded, under-resourced, present-day Rikers Island. But as city jail populations remain above the borough-based jail cap, the number of beds planned are ballooning, deviating from decarceration. 

Advocates blame the Adams administration, pointing to the uptick in enforcement and slashing of social services. The borough-based plan requires reducing the city jail population, so numbers trend up, not down. 

Some advocates, like Katal Center for Justice’s director of advocacy Yonah Zeitz, believe the borough-based plan is no longer tenable under the Adams administration. 

“The city’s plan to close Rikers by 2027 is effectively dead,” said Zeitz. “The Adams administration has missed or flat-out ignored every deadline and legal and process benchmark related to the city’s enacted 2019 closure plan. One key tenant of the plan is decarceration, and Adams’s ‘jail-first’ public safety [approach] has led the city’s jail population to go up instead of down—completely derailing the closure plan. 

“Mayor Adams must commit to shutting down Rikers, passing a budget that reduces the jail population, and utilizing the city’s vast resources to expedite the process.” 

Resignation among Chinatown’s champions

On the other hand, Chinatown’s advocates see the jail’s construction as inevitable. 

“The only way to stop the borough-base[d] jails from being built is [if] more than half of the City Council has to vote again against the closure of Rikers Island,” said Lee. “That is what’s in front of us…this shift is moving fast, and it is the law, so we have to be really clear: No one’s calling to change the law. Unless you’re willing to solicit the entire City Council to change the law, the jails are getting built. Rikers Island is getting closed.”

For Lee and Neighbors Below Canal, advocacy ultimately means gathering information for the Chinatown community and spreading the neighborhood’s story for the jail’s construction that he says the city is “dead set” on. He maintains if the city must build the facility, it should be kept at a functional, maximum size without impacting local residents, particularly the substantial population of elderly and those living with a disability.

“The damage is done—we’re getting the jail,” said Chan. “Not only that, there’s going to be more money put into it [and] other people will benefit from that because this facility is going to be built as we go. They need to build in such a way to foresee the incoming traffic to be facilitated in the complex. We can force them to lower the numbers, because it’s built as we go.”

While the advocates who spoke to the AmNews were vastly divided about the borough-based jail plan, they overwhelmingly agreed on funding social programs, reducing the detainee population, and holding the DOC accountable. 

Leah Faria, director of community liaisons for the Women’s Community Justice Association, said the common goal is safety, whether in the community or behind bars. Formerly held at the Rose M. Singer Center on Rikers, the borough-based jail proponent calls herself both an abolitionist and a realist. 

“​​We got to keep the conversations going and we got to educate to let them know we all fight for the same kind of goal,” said Faria. “It’s not us against them—we [are] just trying to get to a place where we can have safer communities, and the people within the communities can get whatever resources they need, whether it be housing, whether it be jobs.” 

Darren Mack, executive director of Freedom Agenda, extended an open invitation to work together on middle-ground issues. 

“I think residents of lower Manhattan and Chinatown who care honestly and deeply about preventing DOC abuses on Rikers now and in the borough-based jails in the future can be an important voice in this conversation,” he said by email. “As the jail designs are finalized, they can help shape this plan for the better, including fighting against the mayor’s constant pressure to add beds and reduce therapeutic housing units in the jails. 

“They can also pressure this mayor to reverse his destructive course and use supportive housing, mental health supports, and other community alternatives to incarceration to bring down the population at Rikers as we move toward the borough-based jails and a smaller carceral footprint by 2027.”
Tandy Lau is a Report for America corps member who writes about public safety for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep him writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.

Related