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Urban Investigations

From Cellblock to Your Block

In March 2017, New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio pledged to close the Rikers Island jail complex within 10 years and introduced plans to build four new “borough-based” jails in the city. Who decides where jails get built? How do jails impact surrounding neighborhoods? What are the impacts of jails on the incarcerated, their families, and their communities?

In the spring of 2018, CUP collaborated with Teaching Artist Stephen Kwok and public high school students from Life Sciences Secondary School to investigate these questions.

Students created public art interventions, surveyed community members near the Manhattan Detention Complex, and interviewed key stakeholders working on the issue. This booklet is a guide to what they discovered.