Jails and Playgrounds

The New York Times recently reported on a Brooklyn neighborhood that had a “jail” as part of the local playground.

A ‘Jail’ for Children Stirs a Ruckus in Brooklyn

By Cara Buckley and Mick MeenanRobert Stolarik for The New York Times A maintenance worker prepared to paint over the word “Jail” at a playground at a public housing project in Brooklyn on Wednesday.

Playground controversies usually involve bickering parents, unruly dogs or bullies.

One exception is at the Tompkins Houses, a city housing project in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, where an orange jungle gym adorned with the word “Jail,” a cell door and prison bars has, six years after its installation, set off outrage in the neighborhood and the blogosphere, along with a hasty official response.

Children may play cops and robbers all the time, but putting a pretend jail in a public housing playground in a historically black community struck some residents as an insult.

“We started complaining because it was like promoting kids to go to jail,” said Natasha Godley, 37, who has a 6-year-old son.

The prison look, including the offending word, was part of the original design of the playground, which was made by a company called Landscape Structures and erected in March 2004, the New York City Housing Authority said on Wednesday.

Monifa Bandele/Black and Brown News The jail, as it once was.

But it had not elicited complaints until this week, said Sheila Stainback, an agency spokeswoman.

Lumumba Bandele, a lecturer in black history at the City University of New York who lives nearby, said he began complaining to the housing authority and local officials about the playground this past weekend.

“The fact is that this community along with six others in New York City makes up the majority of the prison population in New York State,” he said. “And to have this here under the auspices of NYCHA is absolutely insulting.”

The jungle gym, tucked behind a building near Throop and Park Avenues, sits across from a handball court adorned with paintings of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.

On Sunday, the Web site Black and Brown News published a photo of the jungle gym by Mr. Bandele’s wife, Monifa Bandele, accompanying a critical article about it.

“There is no kind, gentle, diplomatic way to describe the offense against a community by this ‘Jail Playground’ on a New York City Housing Authority property,” the article began.

Some residents said that complaints about the play set were actually not a new phenomenon. One Housing Authority grounds worker who declined to give her name said that her mother was so incensed about the inscription that, two years ago, she marched over to the play set and covered the word “Jail” with gold spray paint. It was not clear how the word came to be restored.

Robert Stolarik for The New York Times The play set, jail-free.

But on Wednesday after the Black and Brown News article was picked up by Brownstoner and other sites, Housing Authority workers arrived to paint over the “Jail.” Later, another worker showed up in painter’s pants and began scouring off the word “Jail” and the fake bars, which appeared stenciled into the play set, with steel wool and paint remover.

The authority, Ms. Stainback said, “painted over the equipment as a temporary solution to replacing this part of the playground.” The authority is also looking into who ordered the equipment.

Calls to the main office of Landscape Structures were not returned. A woman who answered the phone at one of its sales offices, in Carle Place on Long Island, said the company provides playgrounds for the Housing Authority, “but only by their approval.” She said she had never seen one of the company’s play sets adorned with the word “jail,” but emphasized, “I’m only answering the phones.”

Somewhere in the city’s public housing universe, the playground has a twin, Ms. Stainback said. She would not divulge its location, but said that its “Jail” sign and bars would be painted over, too.

(Link to the article)