An unmarked burgundy van turned off Whalley Avenue and rolled slowly into a secluded parking lot. There was nothing about it that gave away its function, except perhaps the steel mesh behind the black tinted windows.
Nor were its passengers dressed in orange jumpsuits. Escorted by two uniformed marshals, three men in baggy heather-gray sweat suits stepped out of the van. With slow and weary steps, each man walked toward the lobby, clutching everything he owns. The first had a stuffed envelope, the second carried a cardboard box and leaned on a wooden cane and the third held a 944-page ...
This is definitely the YDN story of the week, at least.
Once a prisoner has finished his sentence, he is released. Perhaps he has probationary responsibilities, perhaps not. I don't see what's so newsworthy about the fact that New Haven, like hundreds of other cities in America, has a place where these ex-cons (i.e., currently law-abiding citizens) can be dropped off. New Haven also has train tracks and public housing and television towers and reservoirs and courtrooms and elementary schools and all sorts of other things that exist in cities whether or not college students bother to notice them. They're all lurking within a mile or two of Yale.
..only to be railroaded right back by one of the most corrupt P.D's in the States
#1 is very right about the false "scary-factor" of ex-cons. Having taught in a GED prison program, I can attest that many prisoners have a genuine desire to turn their lives around and make a change. The most important factor for sustaining this desire is societal encouragement.
An important article.
Back in the day (until they got in trouble), the PDs of surrounding towns used to round up their homeless for a free ride to downtown New Haven.
Hospitals, too, used to send their vagrants to New Haven ERs.
The real high sentences should be for suburban crooks who speed at 60MPH through the Yale campus on their way to work. Or for the people who carry or sell illegal weapons.
Drug offenders should be let off with a slap on the wrist - to spend even 1% of the justice system on small time coke dealers while ignoring the other huge systemic problems in our society (pollution, guns, domestic violence, white collar crime) is a huge misalignment of resources.
I would like to say that I don't get it. Why are these facilities called Correctional Institutions when they do anything but? It is a "CORRECTIONAL" facility, right? Yet the men are ALLOWED to go to school, work or go to rec and lay around all day long.
I am a mother of a repeat offender. I get very upset that he is allowed to have such choices, while I am out here working everyday to make it through the week. I do not send him money any longer and I always tell him they would not like me as a warden, as I would make it "MANDATORY" for the inmates to either work or learn a skill/trade that they can put to use when they do return to society. No lounging!!!! I feel this would help them realize they really are about something in this world with a push in the right direction.
I came to post almost exactly what #1 did but you beat me to it!
I would also like to point out that while Yale and New Haven spend a great deal of time and tax money criminalizing our lower-income neighbors, but let the perverts and thieves who live in the dorms and carry a Yale ID card get out of jail free. I have never been assaulted, threatened, or burglarized by a random New Haven resident on the street, only by "Yale Men and Women" on Yale property.
New Haven is a dramatically unbalanced place to live. I was born and raised in the Elm City, and to be someone who saw the castle walls of Yale day by day just to come home to section 8 housing, was just devistating to me. Often I had been patted down by New Haven police, just for walking in the neighborhood I had lived in my entire life. I know first hand that the city itself is dangerous and that Yale campus is an oasis in comparison.
The problem in New Haven isn't simply crime itself. There's crime everywhere. It's just that there's extremely violent crime taking place right outside of Yale campus. This makes New Haven to be a difficult foster sibling to the students at Yale it seems.
I can't seem to grasp the dynamic of Yale's sometimes altruistic vibe towards the city's communities. It's the city that cares for it's citizens. It's not Yale's responsibility to "fix" the problems that, say, this article represents. If one really wishes to change the state of affairs in New Haven, one must actually raise a family here, invest in the public schools, and get involved in the communities. This is a root of the problem of crime and violence in or around Yale campus.
If the reader would like to understand who these scary "ex-cons" are, spend two hours in the state court on Church and Elm. You will notice two things: 1) 50 % or 60% of the people put away in those two hours are for possession of "drug perephenalia" or for other extremely minor offenses. 2) They are mostly black and hispanic.
Now ask yourself: how many Yale students have drug perephenalia?
When "ex-cons" are discussed, as in this article, there is an always an assumption that these people are scary in one way or another. In fact, the offenses that most commit are for the same types of activities that many Yale students engage in every night. The only difference is that for the Yale students, these activities are a source of entertainment, pleasure, and is laughed off as youthful indiscretion years later. When the same activities are practiced by people whose racial and socio-economic status are different, the result is imprisonment, humiliation, destruction of career, destruction of career, possibly rape, etc.
Conclusion: To discuss imprisonment in the New Haven or the U.S. without discussing deep systemic racism is to contribute to the maintaince of this deeply racist system.