Potemkin Prison

Empress Catherine II touring the newly conquered lands along the Dnieper in 1787 greeted by her "Amazonskaya Rota" (Company of Amazons) under Captain Elena Ivanovna Sarandova, from a 1911 military encyclopedia. The myths are really myths (Prince Potemkin's enemies claimed that Kherson and Sevastopol didn't really exist but were just false fronts erected on the roadside), but it's time we started facing the fact that the journey really was propaganda for an imperial seizure that maybe should never have taken place. Image via German Wikipedia.

New York note: on Rikers Island, the New York City jail complex in the East River where 6,000 criminal defendants await trial because they don't qualify to do that at home on their own recognizance, is a notorious horror, which works so badly that it routinely fails to get detainees not only to their medical appointments but even to their own court dates

Councilmembers said it is unclear exactly how many make their court appearances, since state court data conflicts with stats reported by the Department of Correction, but it appears that appearance rates for incarcerated people are plummeting, and are about the same for those who are free before trial.

One Rikers detainee told investigators that he was taken to a courthouse six times for hearings on his case, but was never brought to the actual courtroom to see a judge. Other detainees complained to their defense attorneys that they missed their court dates because correction officers failed to bring them and then falsely accused them of refusing to get on a bus to go.

and where seven inmates so far this year have died, and 19 last year, likely to be put into federal receivership later this year because, as a federal monitor said in a report issued last month, of a

“disturbing level of regression” since the city agreed to follow an action plan intended to stabilize the jail system last June. The Department of Correction repeatedly failed to consult the monitor, displaying an “unwillingness and inability to acknowledge the myriad of issues,” the monitor Steve Martin said.

“The pace of reform has stagnated instead of accelerated in a number of key areas,” Martin noted, “meaning that there has been no meaningful relief for people in custody or staff from the violence and the unnecessary and excessive use of force.”

Mayor Eric Adams doesn't want to see it taken over, I'm not sure why unless he somehow takes it personally as a judgment against his management of the system (or because he's been in the pocket of the Correction Captains Association since he took office), and he seems indifferent to the City Council's mandate to close the place down altogether by 2027, replacing it with four new jails in the boroughs, even though he's required to do it by law (that's presumably about the voters who will get the new jails as neighbors—I know that's the case in Chinatown, where there's already a big jail in the former Tombs, then the Bernard Kerik Center, and now I don't know what it's called), and what I'm just learning is that there's a faction of councilmembers aligned with him on this, mostly Republicans, called, what else, the "Common Sense Caucus", who went on a tour of the place yesterday:

Just toured Rikers Island with the Common Sense Caucus after last visiting in 2021. What a change!

Under @NYCMayor and Commissioner Molina, the conditions have vastly improved from the abysmal state we saw under de Blasio and Schiraldi. (1/2) pic.twitter.com/RCuh1srE69

— Robert Holden (@BobHoldenNYC) August 8, 2023

Gothamist, an online property of WNYC radio that is probably at this point the best local newspaper in town, reports,

“I couldn't believe the difference. Freshly painted, shiny floors, better lighting,” said Robert Holden, a Queens councilmember who vacillates between the Democrat and Republican parties. “They had not only video games, but they had a pretty nice movie theater – this is all new under Commissioner [Louis] Molina – even pingpong, which one of the councilmembers got involved with playing one of the detainees.”

Sure, boss. A paint job is definitely going to save lives.

What I wanted to say was something profound about the inherently deceptive and self-deceptive nature of "centrism", but I can't even. Who asked them, anyway? I just want to scream.

Cross-posted at The Rectification of Names.