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Million Dollar Blocks: the neighborhood costs of America's prison boom (by Jennifer Gonnerman) in Prison Profiteers.
Excerpt: In Brooklyn last year, there were 35 blocks that fit this category - ones where so many residents were sent to state prison that the total cost of their incarceration will be more than $1 million. In at least one case, the price tag will actually surpass $5 million. These blocks are largely concentrated in the poorest pockets of the borough's poorest neighborhoods, including East New York, Bedford-Stuyvesant, and Brownsville.
...New York's state prisons release around 28,000 people a year. Nearly two-thirds of them return to New York City. They arrive wearing state-issued clothes - a plain sweatshirt and stiff denim pants - and they come back to the same streets they left. They bring home all the memories and lessons of prison life, plus the system's parting gift, $40. Usually, they discover that the neighborhoods they left behind have not changed, and that life on the outside can be incredibly difficult. If the past is any predictor, half of them will be back upstate within three years. |
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| "70% of the children in this school live below the federal poverty line." BROOKLYN CASTLE tells the stories of five members of the chess team at a below-the-poverty-line inner city junior high school that has won more national championships than any other in the country. The film follows the challenges these kids face in their personal lives as well as on the chessboard, and is as much about the sting of their losses as it is about the anticipation of their victories. Ironically, the biggest obstacle thrust upon them arises not from other competitors but from recessionary budget cuts to all the extracurricular activities at their school. BROOKLYN CASTLE shows how these kids’ dedication to chess magnifies their belief in what is possible for their lives. After all, if they can master the world’s most difficult game, what can’t they do? via http://www.brooklyncastle.com/about/synopsis |
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