I found another article about the Pavonia Avenue jail to go along with my above post. Some cool Shawshank Redemption action going on right in old Journal Square. I wonder if they met up with Red on the beach of Zihuatanejo, Mexico? (I think Stephen King did a little ?borrowing? from the head lines of the Jersey Journal/Star-Ledger/NYT?s)

Star-Ledger, The (Newark, NJ)

HUDSON JAIL INMATES FLEE ON SECOND TRY


Published: November 30, 1989

Three Jersey City men escaped the Hudson County Jail early yesterday in a breakout that closely resembled a failed attempt by two of the inmates last month.

Luis Bayron, 18, Porfirio Rivera, 29, and David Cordero, 20, were still being sought last night following their flight from the Jersey City facility, authorities said. They added that Bayron is a murder suspect.

According to jail officials, the inmates apparently used a hammer to pry open a cell door and puncture a hole in the ceiling over an adjacent catwalk before making their way through the crawl space. They then removed a metal plate at the end of the shaft and used a ladder fashioned from bedsheets and a rope to lower themselves from a fourth-floor window overlooking Pavonia Avenue, officials added. The jail officials said the escape occurred between 11 p.m. Tuesday and 7 a.m.

In addition to homicide, county spokeswoman Lori Rankin said Bayron has been charged with weapons possession and robbery. She added Rivera and Cordero were awaiting trial on charges that include robbery.

Jail officials said the three men were not believed to be armed.

According to Rankin, on Oct. 11 Bayron and Rivera were charged with attempted escape after jail officials detected a similar rope ladder hanging from a window of the jail.

Rankin said the state Department of Corrections was scheduled to conduct a "full security audit" of the jail last night.

Until the audit was completed, said Rankin, "We will have extra security precautions, a canine corps to patrol the facilities and one additional armed post" outside the jail.

She said the state was also sending a "lighting team" to brighten the Pavonia Avenue side of the facility where the three escaped.

"They will be flooding that side with light as an extra precaution," said Rankin.


*** ***

Three Men Use Rope Ladder To Escape Jail in Jersey City

AP(NYT)
Published: November 30, 1989

Three inmates, including one charged with murder, escaped overnight from the Hudson County Jail by descending a homemade rope ladder in view of a major thoroughfare, the authorities said today.

Between 11 P.M. Tuesday and 7 A.M. today, the prisoners apparently pried open a cell door, punched a hole in the ceiling over the adjacent catwalk and made their way to the end of a crawl space. There they pushed out a metal wall plate and emerged near a fourth-story window overlooking Pavonia Avenue at the front of the jail, where they climbed down, a spokesman, Cas Rakowski, said.

Also, we could end the War on Drugs so we don't have to create more prisons. Less people in prison means less children who grow up without parents (and will be less likely to go to prison themselves).

These two guys are hardly break through architects. They are not only ripping off Tim Burton?s Gotham City architecture, there are also ripping off the idea of having a highrise prison in Journal Square Jersey City. It sort of looked like the one in the picture without the ?arches? . I think you guys should go back to the drawing board.

Our infamous jail was on the corner of Central and Pavonia. It is now a parking lot behind the Court House/ Administration Building. It was closed in the 80?s amid a ton of controversy and ripped down in the 90?s. Inmates moved to the new Kearney jail.

A lot of problems arose in the mid 80?s because of the explosion of inmates in county jails around the country. Around the same time as crack started hitting the scene. Also a time when people were still existing JC by the truck load.

?In recent years soaring drug arrests have swelled the inmate population. The Hudson County Prosecutor recently said his caseload had doubled to 16,000 cases in 1989, from 8,000 in 1985.?

These paragraphs from the NYT?s (and full links at bottom) will give you a quick picture of what it looked like. (mentally) I can?t find any pictures of it.

?Overcrowding, especially in the last year, has made the (8 story) grimy gray brick-and-stone building on Pavonia Avenue a tinderbox of frayed nerves. Traces of toilet paper and burned sheets from a dozen disturbances hang from the bars.?

(the jail was build to hold 300 inmates)

?In May 1982, a Superior Court judge said conditions at the 63-year-old Hudson County jail were deplorable and ruled that inmates were being deprived of their constitutional rights because of overcrowding. At the time, the average daily population was over 500 inmates. As of March 14, the number was 869. With a rated capacity of 302 inmates, the eight-story Hudson jail was at 288 percent of capacity as of that date. Among large county jails, only Passaic County's was higher at 332 percent with 1,511 inmates.?

(There was a fire in 1982 it is still listed as one of the top ten prison fires in the US.)

?PRESENT and former inmates at the Hudson County Jail are disputing the official version, given by the County Prosecutor, of the fire in which seven inmates died two weeks ago, according to Howard Moskowitz, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union. Mr. Moskowitz said that he had interviewed more than a dozen inmates who were on the eighth floor of the 56-year-old jail when smoke began coming from Cellblock 8-7. That is where the seven inmates - including one who had admitted during psychiatric evaluation that he played with matches - were trapped. The official version of the tragedy, as given by Howard J. Ruvoldt Jr., the Hudson County Prosecutor, was that a guard about 60 feet from the cellblock was driven back by smoke and flames and unable to free the inmates. He produced a minute-by-minute timetable of what happened from 5 A.M., when the fire was discovered, until it was extinguished nine minutes later. ?

?On May 19, 1982, when Judge Gregory J. Castano of State Superior Court ruled that inmates were being deprived of their constitutional rights because of severe overcrowding, the daily average was about 500 inmates. A month before seven inmates had died in a fire. He ordered a complete renovation or a new jail by 1987. But ground was not broken until that year.?

?In March an inmate died of a beating that gave rise to disturbances amid allegations of a ''goon squad'' of corrections officers. A deputy warden and three guards were indicted on murder charges in his death.?

?In December a 28-year-old inmate was shot to death, hit by .32-caliber pellets in a shotgun shell that authorities said had gotten inadvertently mixed in with shells meant only to stun rioting inmates.?



Some things I remember about the jail?

-Parents use to take their kids up to it if they were bad. Stand them across the street and tell the kids that they would to wind up in there? If a parent was lucky and inmate would be yelling or throwing crap out of a window for added theatrics. I remember my mother?s sweet voice..?That?s it you?re going up to the jail ..LET?S GO!? (Damm?I knew I should not have lifted that penny gum ball from John?s Bargain Store up Journal Square!)

-The Cub Scouts would have annual trips to the jail/courthouse. We would get little badges and be lead into a cell and locked in. Scared the shi* out of me.

-There was a tunnel from the jail to the old Court House so inmates could be brought directly into court from jail.

-Politicians would hold annual ?spend a night in jail? events. How ironic some actually wound up in a real cell?.like County Executive Robert C. Janiszewski.

-There was an under ground parking lot for cops to bring in prisoners. The driveway had the 8 story cell windows lined up on either side of it. The inmates would ?store? up (get ready) piss and crap in containers. As the cop cars were driving down the driveway the inmates would ?christen? the cars with a gift.

-Families of inmates lining the streets across from the jail. Yelling up to their loved ones.

Too bad the county didn?t hold onto the old jail building instead of making it a parking lot. That would have been a cool place for condo?s. You think the ghosts in the Old Medical Center or Saint Francis Hospital?s are pissed. Just imagine having an inmate as a ghost in your bedroom. Or make it a hotel like Boston?s Liberty Hotel ..cool place? www.libertyhotel.com (you know you urban explorers / newcomers would have dug that)


Old-timers got any stories about the jail? Jump in.

*** **** links to pieces about jail *****


Warden and 2 Jail Guards Held in Death - March 1989 (the guy was from DTJC)

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/03/16/nyr ... tml?pagewanted=all&src=pm


(story about the jail) No Headline ? Jan 1990

http://www.nytimes.com/1990/01/26/nyr ... tml?pagewanted=all&src=pm


Inmates in Jersey City Set Fires in an Uprising ? Oct 1989

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/14/nyr ... fires-in-an-uprising.html

I don't believe that architectural solutions can solve serious problems. Didn't extreme architectural determinism get blown up at the same time as Pruitt-Igoe or more locally at Curry Woods?

Quote:

?Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.? Bertrand Russell

This is retarded.

Quote:

Umm, can't this be done in a vertical building and each floor or floors represent the the phases with the bottom floor representing integration. The design is the ugliest thing I have ever seen.

After staring at this for a good 5 minutes, I have no idea how I feel about this yet.

Behold the 499.SUMMIT, a concept for a skyscraper prison designed to reduce recidivism rates in New Jersey. Who wouldn't want to be locked up here?

The hypothetical hoosegow sits on top of the PATH train line in New Jersey, making the transfer of convicts from all around the region quick and easy. Inside the arch-shaped building are separate high and low-security cellblocks, a work-release program and a public meeting space. The design, which would slide right in with the alien architecture in Half-Life 2, was actually formed by doing origami on the standard prison's floorplan, as you can see here and then here.

The minds behind the bent-over jail are University of Pennsylvania students Greg Knobloch and Andreas Tjeldflaat, who are trying to tackle the problem of inmates leaving the system without the proper amount of rehabilitation. Two-thirds of inmates in New Jersey wind up back in prison within five years of their release, they say; to help them better adjust to society, they propose giving their tower a tiered system of gradually expanding freedoms. Here's how the students put it:

Our prison system has failed to see advancements throughout the past century and desperately requires innovation and re-imagination. While recent literature begins to question the sociological status of prisons, there has be little exploration of the physical apparatus in which inmates are housed. We as designers must take a critical look at these static institutions, and question how we can play a significant role in the design and function of future prisons.

499.SUMMIT carefully challenges all preconceived notions of the word ?prison?, and proposes simple yet powerful ideas that re-imagine the high-rise as an urban penitentiary. The massing consists of three towers in the shape of an arch. The inherent linear and formal qualities of the ?arch? allowed us to establish our key circulatory concept: UP, OVER, DOWN. Each arch has three primary phases, Incarceration (up), Transformation (over), and Integration (down). The arches begin isolated during the incarceration phase and merge together both physically and programmatically during the integration phase. As the inmates graduate through the facility, they are being exposed to an increasing degree of social interaction, in order to make the transition back into society as soft as possible. To catalyst this process, public program and residential housing units are introduced in the integration phase downwards.
It's a bold idea and a fierce design. One commenter on Design Boom has compared it to the revolutionary structures of Danish architect Bjarke Ingels. One wonders, though, how Jersey City's residents would feel about the most eye-grabbing thing in town being a prison. See more renderings of the highrise prison below, as well as a video from the duo featuring an inmate named Squirrel. Lower the volume toward the end unless you love Euro disco riddled with laser noises:Jail on Grove