This is a thread about NYC's newly proposed four jail complexes in the Bronx, Queens, Manhattan, and Brooklyn, expansion of the carceral state, and displacement in Manhattan's Chinatown. Bear with me, there's a lot to cover.
Yesterday, the city released a draft plan to build four new jail complexes under the guise of closing Rikers Island. This is so important and will have huge implications for the near future but there is still barely any media coverage.
Despite what you heard from de Blasio about a shut down, Rikers is under full operation. The city is essentially expanding its carceral regime by building four new jail complexes in Queens, Manhattan, and Brooklyn. The full plan can be viewed here: rikers.cityofnewyork.us.
The plan was drafted entirely behind close doors without any kind of meaningful community engagement. The "public input sessions" are quickly approaching, the first one will be held at P.S. 133 William A. Butler School in Brooklyn on 9/20 at 6:00 PM.
The Manhattan Detention Complex will be built in Chinatown at 80 Centre Street, the Brooklyn Complex will be in Downtown Brooklyn at 275 Atlantic Avenue, the Queens Complex will be in Kew Gardens at 26-02 82nd Street, and Bronx Complex will be in Mott Haven at 320 Concord Avenue.
These neighborhoods are already over policed and the residents are working people — many who live below the poverty threshold. There are also longstanding and severe health issues due to air pollution in the South Bronx, Chinatown, and Downtown Brooklyn.
These neighborhoods have also historically borne the brunt of city disinvestment and destructive urban renewal projects like expressways, arenas, power plants, etc. that have for generations affected the lives and livelihoods of existing residents.
Mott Haven, Downtown Brooklyn, and Chinatown, these three neighborhoods in particular are experiencing gentrification and massive displacement. The residents from these communities have been fighting hard for housing justice and tenants' rights.
Gentrification and development are intimately connected, the expansion of the carceral state leads to increased criminalization and incarceration of poor, queer, and trans communities of color who are the most directly impacted by eviction and displacement.
The proposed new detention complex in Manhattan's Chinatown at 80 Centre Street is steps away from Manhattan housing court, a place that tenants interact with on a daily basis because of increased evictions and landlord harassment due to gentrification.
The reality is adding more jails, police, and luxury apartments do not cater to the immediate needs of these residents many who live on the brink of homelessness. Right now homelessness in NYC is at an all time high: picturethehomeless.org/home/blog-and-….
This isn't the first time that the city has proposed to expand its carceral regime in Manhattan's Chinatown. The proposed jail complex will be next to the Tombs, also known as the Manhattan Detention Complex that houses nearly 1,000 people, most of them pretrial detainees.
In 1982 under Ed Koch, the Tombs was expanded to include a 9-story north tower which was heavily opposed by Chinatown residents and 12,000 people took the streets in protest. This was one of the largest organized protests in the history of Manhattan's Chinatown. 
It's critical to remember that the carceral state is not confined to prisons, jails, or detention facilities, penal power expands outwards to the streets, to the parks, to schools, to homes. It affects the most basic elements of neighborhood life and community building.
How can we find solutions beyond any form of the carceral regime and begin to talk about nonpunitive transformative justice in the places that we live? And how would these conversations take form in immigrant communities like Chinatown?
The future can't look like this. The solution can't be to build "mixed use" jail complexes in working-class immigrant and communities of color already struggling with over policing, criminalization, gentrification, and mass displacement.
The timeline on this proposed plan is short. Moving forward, the work will require us to take these questions home to our families and organizational bases so that we can move together on the issue and develop an analysis that is not rooted in anti-black racism.
