Squirreled away in the deepest bowels of New York siberia, the Metropolitan Detention Center-Brooklyn is a place you want to avoid on its best days. These are not its best days.
Locked away in dark and freezing cells with little heat for days, left to languish alone in the dead of winter — this is how the federal government of the United States thinks that it can treat the people in its care.
No, this isn’t some C.I.A. black site overseas. It is a federal detention center in Brooklyn, where inmates were being held in abominable conditions in America’s largest city.
The facility is run by the Bureau of Prisons, and while it denies that the facility is completely lacking heat and hot water, it’s at least substantially short of normal conditions. This distinction doesn’t save the conditions from being called “abominable,” as there is (or at least should be) no question but that they are required to provide these utter basics to inmates.
Whether storming the Bastille is an effective response to these conditions, that there is a severe problem that demands an immediate fix seems beyond question, even if District Judge Analisa Torres figures it can hold until Tuesday.
That something went particularly wrong at MDC, as opposed to the ordinary wrongs like, oh, rats, rape and beatings, has focused attention on federal detention facilities, prompting the New York Times to ponder why, particuarly given the freezing temperatures, such a problem was “allowed” to happen, and why it wasn’t immediately fixed.
The history of abuses in federal jails, prisons and detention centers, whose populations are disproportionately black and Hispanic, long predates the Trump administration — and rarely draws much attention. Maybe current officials thought they could treat people callously at the Metropolitan Detention Center because they were mostly poor, and black and brown.
It’s a matter of demographics that disproportionately black and Hispanic, but just as reflected in the bizarrely misguided assumption that a reform of the system would serve “nice white boys” as opposed to everyone, harping on the distinction has contorted people’s understanding of who is in the can, who suffers, who is marginalized. Did this “calamity” at MDC happen because “they were mostly poor, and black and brown”? Let’s cut to the pie chart.
Because Hispanic is considered ethnicity rather than race, it’s carved out of the chart with Hispanic at 32.2% and non-Hispanic at 67.8%. So it’s clear, these percentages are definitly disproportionate to representation in the general population. But the impression that these jails are filled only with black and brown people simply isn’t true. It’s a Benneton ad, and it sucks for all of them.
Nor, as an aside, are they necessarily poor, as drug sellers and conspirators of any significance are presumptively detained. It’s not necessarily that they can’t make bail, but that their cash doesn’t help them.
While it’s fair and accurate to state that blacks and Hispanics are significantly overrepresented in the jail population, it’s inaccurate to convey the impression that there are no “nice white boys” in there as well. Well, maybe not all are nice, but that’s a different issue.
While trying to racialize every issue serves the thrust of advocates who pick the low-hanging fruit of racial disparities as a means of condemning the system, it ignores that reality that there are two very distinct problems: The system is deeply flawed for everyone, without regard to race or ethnicity, and there is racial discrimination.
If the heat is off at MDC, it is an inexcusable travesty. Rather than take tours or twit about it, maybe federal officials should be using their hold on the purse strings to compel the BOP to fix it immediately. Maybe a federal judge could hop in a cab and find out, immediately, whether inmates are freezing rather than schedule a hearing for the following week. Nobody in the custody of the United States should freeze, without regard to their race or ethnicity. And that includes the white inmates, who are in there freezing with everyone else.
Short Take: Disproportionately Yours curated from Simple Justice
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