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NARRATION:
In January, Mike Duvalle learned that the jail on 150th Avenue housed 200 people awaiting trial or sentencing on federal charges. He also learned that the jail was planning to expand to the adjacent warehouse, nearly doubling the inmate capacity. So Duvalle was one of the hundreds of southeast Queens residents who attended a town hall meeting that month, where executives of the Geo Group—the private company that manages the facility— were also present.
AX - Duvalle:
They indicated that it would be non-violent pretrial inmates. And we found out that that's not true… they have criminals there… all mixed in.
NARRATION:
The Queens Private Detention Facility is three blocks from the closest home, and four blocks from both a public school and a women's shelter. After the January meeting, residents secured a verbal agreement from the U.S. Marshals and the GEO Group that the jail would not expand. But some community members say the true measure of their success will be this June, when the contract between Geo and the government expires.
Rosedale/Springfield Gardens residents are primarily Caribbean and African-American. The median family income is just over $60,000, and 70 percent of homes are owner-occupied.
AX - Brown
I think race is definitely a part of it. I think things get located in areas where the people have the least amount of power.
NARRATION:
That's Barbara Brown, a resident of Springfield Gardens for more than 20 years. She is Chair of the Eastern Queens Alliance and wants the jail to be closed. Brown says southeast Queens has more than its fair share of unpleasant businesses and the kinds of social service agencies that can drive down property values.
AX - Brown:
We have homeless shelters, we have group homes. In southeast Queens there are poultry markets, there are waste transfer stations. It seems that those things that are negative that most people would say, "not in my backyard, end up in the backyard of those of us who live in southeast Queens.
NARRATION:
Dana Kaplan works with communities all over the country who have fought against the prisons and jails sited in their neighborhoods. She works for the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, and supports communities like Brown's that are fighting the jails and prisons in their midst. Kaplan points to the success of these types of efforts in other cities.
AX - Kaplan:
This isn't something just happening in Rosedale/Springfield Gardens, Geo was just trying to expand and privatize the Shelby County jail in Memphis, TN, and a whole coalition … was able to defeat that plan. So we were able to share that story.
NARRATION:
The struggle between the Rosedale/Springfield Gardens community and the jail there goes back more than ten years. In 1995, the building housed undocumented immigrants arrested at nearby JFK airport and awaiting deportation. Residents' demands that the jail be sited on airport property went unheeded.
Now, residents are keeping the pressure on Congressman Gregory Meeks. As the site is a federal detention center, he's the only one who can compel the government to both cancel its contract with Geo, the private management company, and vacate the building. Meeks' office could not be reached for this report, but the community activists have the support of their city councilman, James Sanders Jr., who's supporting them in their lobbying efforts. He says only one thing can cause the jail to close.
AX - Sanders:
People's Power. The people must rally, must come out and insist that this cannot be.
NARRATION:
Congressman Meeks has said that he will continue to meet with the Department of Justice and Geo in an effort to meet community members' demands.
I'm Dani McClain, Columbia Radio News.