Isn’t the larger issue here why we have so many people locked up in the first place?

The amount of people New York and America, generally, has incarcerated is scandalous.

That said, if people are to be incarcerated, shouldn’t they be given the most humane treatment possible? If building a new jail will reduce over-crowding and improve the quality of life for inmates, I think it should be built.

I sympathize with the residents and activists who oppose the jail. No one wants to pass an incarceration facility as they walk their children to school.

We can construct a new jail in a rural area upstate, but any resident of Dutchess or Ulster County, NY can tell you about the many jails littered along their once scenic roads.

We can debate about where we want to move the problem, about who has to look at it everyday. But the city is not going to build its new jail on the Upper East Side.

The real task, I think, is organized opposition to what someone in the video above called “criminalizing the community.” It’s a harder and longer task, but also a more important one.