by Jayson Hawkins
The Hunts Point neighborhood of the Bronx was emblematic of the Big Apple’s rotten core in the 1990s, an area saturated with drugs, homelessness and prostitution. Facing an influx of inmates from rising crime rates, the city had resorted to a fleet of jail barges but lacked a place to dock its fifth and final ship.
As an ex-president of a local community board lamented, “Hunts Point was a place to put things that no one else wanted.”
In January 1992, tugboats pulled the Vernon C. Bain Center, a featureless five-story jail, into port. The facility, which holds 800 prisoners and has over 300 employees, did not seem out of place among the strip clubs and other eyesores that pockmarked the neighborhood at the time.
Much has changed in the intervening 28 years. Mirroring the renewal of Times Square, Hunts Point has shuttered the sex shops; violent crime has plummeted 280 percent since 1990. Next up is a planned marine terminal along the waterfront, which the city hopes will shift movement of goods from congested roadways to the East River. Part of that shift will include closing the Rain Center to free up potentially valuable real estate. ...
by Jayson Hawkins
For three weeks in October of 2002, the residents of the Washington, D.C. area lived in fear of unknown assassins taking aim at random victims. Thirteen people were shot during that period; 10 died. Perhaps the only thing more shocking than the arbitrary nature of the crime spree was the identity of the snipers: a middle-aged man, John Allen Muhammad, and teenager Lee Boyd Malvo.
Muhammad was depicted as the mastermind behind the murders. He received the death penalty and was executed in 2009. Malvo, only 17 at the time of the killings, was believed to have been heavily influenced by Muhammad. Convicted in eight of the slayings, Malvo received sentences of life without parole for each. Under current laws in Maryland and Virginia, he will never leave prison.
Malvo, a native of Jamaica, has managed to find a measure of joy and normalcy amidst his incarceration. In early March 2020, he wed a woman whom he had been writing and visiting with for the previous two years. The woman’s identity was not revealed, but two of Malvo’s attorneys described her as close to his own age and “an absolutely wonderful individual.”
Carmeta Albarus, part of Malvo’s ...
by Jayson Hawkins
The direction of public policy in massive bureaucratic states tends to create an almost inexorable momentum all on its own, and that momentum often overwhelms not only the conditions that created the policy but also the public welfare it purportedly serves. It is extraordinarily difficult to break ...
by Jayson Hawkins
As public opinion continues to turn against profiting on punishment, a law signed March 6, 2020, by Governor Jared Polis will study the economic effects of eliminating private prisons in Colorado over the next five years and recommend ways to diversify economics that now rely on private ...
by Jayson Hawkins
A pattern of deaths, escapes and alleged civil rights abuses statewide have spurred investigations of at least two major county jails and increased oversight of 313 detention facilities in Ohio, local media revealed in January 2020.
Governor Mike DeWine admitted back in June 2019 that the state ...
by Jayson Hawkins
In recent years, a growing outcry has been raised against the practice of confining prisoners in solitary, even for short periods, because of the connection between solitary and the impairment of overall mental health, especially post-traumatic stress disorder. Multiple studies have linked solitary confinement to heightened rates ...
by Jayson Hawkins
A new law in Maryland approved last year required disclosure of wages paid to prisoners, information that The Baltimore Sun reported on January 2, 2020. The law covered the Division of Correction (DOC), which employs about 12,000 at 17 prisons and prerelease centers, and Maryland Correctional Enterprises ...
by Jayson Hawkins
March 2020 brought sweeping changes to the way people lived and worked as the impact of the coronavirus pandemic spread across the country. Prisons, where social distancing was often difficult or impossible to practice, proved especially vulnerable to COVID-19, yet the Delaware Department of Correction pushed ahead ...
by Jayson Hawkins
The first phase of economic relief stemming from the COVID-19 crisis included $350 billion in loans aimed at keeping U.S. small businesses afloat. The CARES Act, as approved by Congress, offered hope of surviving the pandemic to any business with fewer than 500 employees.
The Small Business ...
by Jayson Hawkins
On October 17, 2019 a former Missouri prisoner accused of faking injuries while in Boone County Jail was ordered to repay almost $1.3 million from a settlement in which he had accused deputies of using excessive force.
In October 2015, after an altercation in the dinner line at ...
