Private Queens jail closure raises questions about future for detainees and facility
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THE QUEENS DETENTION FACILITY. GOOGLE MAPS
By David Brand
A Department of Justice decision to cut ties with New York City’s lone private jail contractor has been hailed as a victory for the surrounding community of Springfield Gardens, near JFK Airport. The neighborhood lacks a library and reliable public transportation, but hosts a privately-run federal lockup where the COVID-19 positivity rate doubled that of Rikers Island during the pandemic’s peak.
The abrupt move does, however, raise questions about what comes next for detainees and the facility itself.
The corporation GEO Group said Monday it had lost its contract with the U.S. Marshals Service to detain cooperating witnesses at the 222-bed Queens Detention Facility in Springfield Gardens. The decision follows an executive order by President Joe Biden instructing the Department of Justice, which oversees the USMS, to phase out the use of private jails.
The GEO Group contract ends March 31, forcing the marshals to transfer every detainee to new facilities over the next two weeks. A spokesperson for the USMS declined to answer questions about the plan for the men housed in the Queens jail.
Detainees and their attorneys say they expect the federal government to move people to the Essex County Correctional Facility in New Jersey. After a storm damaged the roof of the Queens Detention Facility in August 2020, some inmates were transferred to Essex County and USMS has transferred other federal detainees to the facility.
One detainee who spoke with the Eagle Tuesday said news of the Queens Detention Facility closure sent shockwaves through the jail. Guards received their termination notices on Tuesday and inmates worried about being marked as “snitches” at a new jail.
“A lot of inmates are shaken because this was a safe haven,” said the detainee, who asked to remain anonymous because he feared retaliation. “Here you wouldn’t have to deal with violence or someone calling you a rat or a snitch or running up on you because you’re a cooperator, even if your cooperation has nothing to do with them.”
He said some detainees were attacked after the move to the Essex County jail last year. “They ran into complications there because they were cooperators,” he said.
The Queens Detention Facility, located inside a warehouse near JFK Airport, gouges commissary prices and fueled a major COVID-19 outbreak last year, but is still relatively safe compared to other lockups, he said.
“What was going on before was totally wrong, but a lot of people are shell-shocked,” he added.
Corporations that run private jails and prisons under contract with the federal government frequently cut costs to maximize their profits, often at the expense of detainees’ health and wellbeing.
Defense attorney Grainne O’Neill said GEO Group’s approach to the Queens Detention Facility has been no different.
“It’s absolute desolation there, there’s no going outside,” said O’Neill, who has represented clients at the Queens Detention Facility. “They are in a warehouse in Queens and they really are being warehoused there.”
The jail lacks services like GED programs and drug and alcohol counseling, she said. Nevertheless, any sudden move is still a disruptive, life-changing event for people behind bars.
Detainees will face many new issues when they are moved into a new lockup, from a greater risk of violence to figuring out how to move money into their commissary account to learning whether they are allowed to wear their favorite sweatpants in a new jail, she said. They may also be stuck further away from their loved ones and their attorneys, complicating their cases.
“Any change is disruptive. You get moved into a new cell, a new unit with new people. You have to reestablish social standing,” she said. “For family members who live in Queens or can get to GEO, maybe that they can’t as easily get to New Jersey and that’s another hardship.”
The real solution, she said, is to incarcerate fewer people and invest in community services.
Another question is what will become of the physical structure.
GEO Group owns the building and said in a statement that they plan to market the jail to other federal agencies if they are unable to renew their contract with the DOJ and the U.S. Marshals.
That could have another unintended consequence even less palatable to many New Yorkers and justice reformers: an Immigration and Customs Enforcement jail.
Before contracting with the U.S. Marshals Service, the jail was used to hold immigrants arrested by ICE, or its predecessor agency Immigration and Naturalization Services, from 1997 to 2005.
Assemblymember Khaleel Anderson, an outspoken critic of the jail in his Southeast Queens district, said he was determined not to see the facility turned into an ICE detention center.
“I’m relieved that the facility is no longer going to be located in our district and that we are finally moving away from the private prison industry that profits off of Black and brown bodies,” Anderson said. “This facility should not become any other type of jail or prison. It shouldn’t be used by ICE. It shouldn’t be used as any detention facility.”
Anderson suggested another company try to purchase the warehouse to use it for airport-related purposes, particularly with the JFK Redevelopment Plan underway.
“They should use that area for what it is intended for, which is cargo,” he said.
