Advocate Fights For Safer Facilities For Inmates Awaiting Trial

Riker’s Island has been marked as one of the most scandalous jails in New York over the past few years. Now, an ex-con turned prisoner advocate, proposed a plan which allows Brooklyn inmates awaiting trial the opportunity to remain close to family as well as courts and most importantly safer local facilities. Immediately, Brooklynites objected to this proposal acknowledging the revolution Brooklyn is undergoing, housing a prison would only damper the process.

Glenn Martin, former convict who was raised in Bedford-Stuyvesant is currently President of Just Leadership USA, and is determined to minimize the country’s prison population in half by 2030. He went on to voice, “Its almost obnoxious to hear people in Brooklyn push back the idea of building a new, safer jail or rehabbing an old jail”. Brooklynites are not against closing the rough jail facility; in fact an inclement amount of votes have demanded for the jail to be padlocked, however that would call from an immediate relocation for the 7,200 estimate of inmates.

Downtown Brooklyn holds an estimate of 3,000 jail beds; while 800 of them are located at Boerum Hill’s Brooklyn House of Detention on Atlantic Avenue which is classified as the borough’s only city-run jail. According to Corrections Department reports, the detention center is able to house 600 beds at any given moment.

In 2010 the city presented the idea to local residents of the area but they boldly stated they will fight against any attempt to them to revisit the idea.

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President of the Boerum Hill Association civic group, Howard Kolins, is all for ridding Rikers and their facilities but he expressed, “We would continue to be against any expansion at the site…We think it becomes a burden on the community.”

Where as Glenn Martin believes, “community-based jails create opportunities for people to be closer to their families, social services, lawyers.”

It will not be so imperative for the city to find larger or more jails if the city was able to reduce the amount of people waiting for their trial date behind bars. In order to do so, according to Martin, minor and non-violent offenses such as public urination and littering should be decriminalized, as well as failures to appear at court, eliminating cash bails which several low-income residents can’t afford and speeding up trial dates; that alone can reduce the inmate population by and estimate of 1,000 people.

While no changes have yet to be made, and advocates and councilmen try to reach a rational agreement, Riker Island jail will continue to stand in the state of New York.