For nearly two centuries, New York City’s Chinatown has been home to a quintessentially American story: immigrant workers and their families living shoulder-to-shoulder in low-slung tenements. Workers like Dennis Chung, the owner of Pasteur Grill and Noodles, a Vietnamese pho joint he’s run at the neighborhood’s western edge for 27 years – weathering disasters like 9/11, Hurricane Sandy and Covid.
Now another symbol of the American condition is taking shape, directly across from Chung’s shop: a vast new jail. At about 300ft, the new structure is expected to be the tallest correctional facility in the world. And Chung says it could be the thing that finally sinks his business. “With the jail on top of the pandemic, it might be over,” he tells me in Cantonese.
City officials and justice reform advocates say the new jail is a necessary project if they’re going to close Rikers Island, the notoriously grim jail that New York’s city council voted to shut down in 2019. That vote ordered the facility replaced by 2027 with four smaller jails throughout the city, including the one in Chinatown – which planners say will be a more humane institution conveniently located steps from downtown courthouses.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/21/new-york-jail-chinatown-rikers-island
