NYC NOW - May 15, 2023: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: May 15, 2023

What happens after a prisoner dies without loved ones who can take care of the burial? WNYC’s Matt Katz visited Green Haven Correctional Facility to see how some people who die in prison in New York are being afforded a new measure of dignity. Plus, WNYC's Community Partnerships Desk and the nonprofit, Street Lab, are working together to highlight stories from neighborhoods across New York City. We share voices from a recent visit to Brownsville, Brooklyn.

Good evening and welcome to NYC Now. I'm Jene Pierre for WNYC. For generations, New York State prisoners who died were buried in graveyards just outside prison walls. The headstones were marked with prisoner identification numbers instead of names. But that all changed in 2020. In Duchess County, New York, sits Green Haven Correctional Facility. The maximum security prison has the oldest incarceration population of any prison. in the state. What happens then after a prisoner dies without loved ones who can take care of the

burial? WNYC's Matt Katz visited there to see how some people who die in prison are now being afforded a new measure of dignity. Matthew Hahn did two stints in prisons in California several years ago. Now he volunteers as a meditation teacher at San Quentin Prison, but his in-laws are in New York. They live right by Green Haven Correctional Facility. My in-laws go for walks, and there's like a trail that goes by the prison, and they passed by kind of the open gate that leads to this cemetery and saw the graveyard. I think they just got curious. What they found bothered them. This prison graveyard had no names on some of the tombstones, just prisoner identification numbers.

So in February, when Han was in New York visiting his in-laws, he grabbed his camera, went out to the graveyard, and confirmed it for himself. In many ways, the way that we talk about people who are incarcerated, the way that we treat people who are incarcerated, the way that we bury people who died well incarcerated is an attempt at depersonalizing them, at de-personifying them. When Han got out to the cemetery, he saw gravestones without names. But he also talked to a groundskeeper who told him that names were in the process of being added on to grave markers. Han was relieved, and then he was politely kicked off the ground. Han tweeted about this experience and posted some photos. When I saw the tweets, I wanted to find out if dead prisoners were in fact finally being memorialized in a new way. And that's why I came to Greenhaven.

The prison is so massive that when I drive up, I can't even see the end of its concrete walls. I drive down a dirt road that runs alongside one wall and I make a right. And now before me is a lovely rolling meadow, daffodils blooming and a small country cemetery. So I'm Superintendent Miller. I am what they consider ward in here at Greenhaven. Superintendent Mark Miller tells me there are 116 people laid to rest here. They died behind the walls and didn't have next of kin with the means or ability to collect the remains. Miller says those buried here are all afforded small funerals led by a chaplain aligning with their religion. So we take a lot of pride in the barrows here.

Late last year, a 65-year-old man locked up since he was 25 died at the prison. The family couldn't afford a burial, but they could come up to Green Haven from New York City. So the prison arranged a graveside service with the maintenance staff preparing a casket covered in a black cloth. We allowed them to lay flowers on it and give them the proper closure. And they knew that they had the dignity of a proper burial. And yes, the deceased also now get their names on the gravestones. That's because in 2020, state officials updated an obscure regulation on burials at the nine New York prison graveyards to mandate names on new grave markers.

And at Greenhaven, they're going even further. Reverend Alfred Twyman, a prison chaplain, says they're also going back and putting grave markers with names on older burial plots of one-time prisoners. Any mistakes they made, they were judged. That's all been done. But now here they can lay to rest and lay to rest peacefully. On the day I visited two groundskeepers tacked new plaques. with names to gravestones of those who died decades ago.

It's a solemn duty carried out quietly. That was James Pembleton, date of birth, 121, 44, date of death, 21001. We recognize their humanity. We recognize them as people, not just a number, but people. So to me, spiritually as a pastor, it's a wonderful thing. The new plaques still have the ID number underneath the name. As someone who's formerly incarcerated, Matthew Hahn doesn't like that the numbers are still there. But mostly, he wants those who are once incarcerated to not be forgotten, either in death or life.

The longer a person is in prison for, the more people forget them. At least now, he says, their names can be remembered in stone forever. That's WNYC's MacHeads. Stick around. There's more after the break. WNYC has teamed up with the nonprofit street lab to highlight stories from neighborhoods across New York City. Here's what we heard during a recent visit to Zion Triangle Plaza in Brownsville, Brooklyn. My name is Kevin Goddard, and I'm from the Brownsville area. I was born and raised heads.

Right now I do a lot of anti-violence work with the community. I get kids, their IDs, job referrals, that they have been problems in school, just like a mentor, you know, like really an outreach person. Just try to clean up the community, stop the violence, get the kids to, like, put the guns down. So my sister passed away a few years ago over something that could have been settled in the streets, and it's sorry that she had to lose her life over that. So that would kind of give me the drive to just keep doing the work. She was a real tough cookie, and she never backed down from nobody.

She'd be proud of me, real proud of me. My name is Phyllis Chip, and I'm from the Bronx, New York, but I used to live in Brownsville in this community. It was rough, but I lost a lot of childhood friends, you know, do gang, violence, crime. A year and a half ago, my brother was brutally murdered here. He was thrown off a building, and his death went unjustified. Nobody was willing to come forward and talk. It's still a struggle for me to come around the neighborhood because we grew up here

and he lost his life in the same neighborhood that we grew up in. But coming back to visit, it changed a lot. I see a group for the better. I don't know much about the crime around here anymore, but my dad still lives here. So that's why I'm over here. My name is Robert Scott, and I am Brownsville, Van Dyck Housing. I really believe if you were to put more lighting in the area, you will have less gun violence. You won't stop it, but you will slow it down.

Because once the lights come on, everybody hides. The impact of the violence on this neighborhood, it has to do with no resources. Sure, I have a lot of people that was promising a lot of resources, but it never came true. The main thing we want change, because the new generation is here now. Everybody thinks a new generation is going to be 10 years from now. It's not. You know, 5-year-olds, 10-year-olds, that's the new generation. So we were to change things, the narrative, and get them start thinking,

not only thinking, but proving their resources out here. It would change. My name is James Motley. I live in Brownsville. I started a business called James Mojure, Inc., where I actually create data resources programs in our community to get more resources and actually bring a nonprofit organization to make things and it happen in our community.

Recruing young people who are going to start their own business and get the business incorporated. It's actually showing people in Brownsville to start their own, black-owned business in our community. It's actually not enough black-owned business in our community and get our community more involved. So the curriculum they teach in the school system is not to want the students to want to learn.

Students want to learn, son, it's going to actually make them make money and actually change their life around. My name is Jacqueline Singletary. I moved to Brownsville in 1964. I'm originally from Virginia. I have seen Brownsville at its highest peak

in the 60s. I've seen Brownsville at its lowest peak. Brownsville was at its best when you would just dress up on Sunday and window shop. Window shop up and down, picking avenue, up and down, Rockaway, and you could find anything you wanted.

At its worst, when the stores was burned out and the drugs came in, you know, a lot of people ran, moved away, stores closed. Now I am seeing Brownsville make a U-turn. I see a lot of homes coming back in the area. Not so much of the stores coming back. The biggest change I see, diversity coming back. When I moved here, Brownsville was very diverse. So I see a lot of diversity, and that I like. My name is Mary Alice Miller.

I was born and raised in Brownsville, moved away, came back. The greatest resource in Brownsville is its people. Yes, there are stories of crime and poverty and undereducation and degradation. There are uplifting stories. There are so many positive people doing positive things in Brownsville. Not everything is about cops and robbers. That's a collection of voices from residents in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Brownsville. Thanks for listening to NYC Now from WNYC.

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