Bayview prison:A Chelsea neighbor often unnoticed

A female inmate takes some time to learn Microsoft Word at the Bayview Correctional Facility last week.

First In A Series

By Chris Lombardi

Catherine Cook, superintendent since 2005 at Bayview Correctional Facility on West 20th Street and Eleventh Avenue, has spent more than half her life working at prisons — most recently as deputy superintendent at the famous Sing Sing prison in upstate New York. When Chelsea Now asked Cook last week if Bayview, a small, medium-security women’s prison, felt relaxing by comparison to Sing Sing, Supt. Cook leaned back in her chair and smiled.

“It is and it isn’t,” she said. “Being superintendent — it’s very different.” She is happy that, unlike upstate towns that resist having a prison close by, the response of Chelseans is typically blasé: “Oh, so that’s where you work.” Most of them, she admits, don’t notice.

Ask your average Chelsea resident about the prison down the block, and you’ll get a blank stare. Even the thousands who go into Chelsea Piers each day may never have looked closely at the tall, elegant 76-year-old building across the street, at 550 West 20th Street, with the hard-to-miss blue “Department of Correction” sign. Some know the Knox Martin mural, “Venus,” that looms large on its southern wall—soon to be obscured by a new Jean Nouvel condo tower at 100 West Eleventh Avenue—or remember the controversy that erupted in 1986 when it turned out that some phone calls to Motor Vehicles, asking for information, were actually being answered within those stone walls. But for the most part, the prison has been a quiet neighbor, changing as the neighborhood has, but with a distinctly different rhythm.

In 1978, when the 44-year-old Seamen’s Home began housing the new Bayview women’s prison, Chelsea already contained a number of smaller-scale correctional projects, from the Shepherd Center on 22nd Street to a post-prison halfway house at the Church of the Holy Apostles. Meanwhile, an explosion of new prison initiatives, in the wake of the 1971 riot at Attica State Prison, helped inmates go out on work release, get federally funded job training, or go to college funded by federal Pell Grants. In the years since then, both the neighborhood and trends in corrections have shifted dramatically—several times.

Now, with Superintendent Cook at the helm, the prison’s 300 inmates are busy all the time. Riding the wave of the newest philosophy in corrections, all prisoners begin to plan for the future from their initial day of detention, often first coming to grips with substance abuse, domestic violence and other mental health issues. Nearly half the group of current inmates—114 women—are already on “work release,” going out to jobs in the community and then returning to sleep at the prison as they serve out the rest of their time. The remaining 179 women are in “general confinement,” meaning they don’t go out but work full-time at jobs inside the prison, from kitchen to office work, and are then required to do something about the next step: They take classes toward their high school equivalency diploma (GED), or train in office skills or desktop publishing. A small, growing, determined few are pursuing a college degree in a new program sponsored by Bard College. Studies have shown for years that all of these approaches, from addiction treatment to college work, cuts inmates’ recidivism rates by more than half. But at Bayview, some of these treatment and education programs also have prisoners on their governing board and reflect what the women are asking for.

Chelsea Now visited Superintendent Cook at Bayview last Thursday and discovered there are many stories in what the New York State Department of Corrections calls Bayview’s “vertical urban center.” Even our first visit offered a glimpse of some of the life under Chelsea’s surfaces, as always more complex and varied than meets the eye.

A vertical neighborhood

Designated a “historic resource” by the Department of City Planning in 2005, Bayview’s quietly grand eight-story building was built in 1931 by the YMCA as the Seamen’s Home, serving the merchant marines’ sailors and crews. Many of the details of the building still echo those years, including stained-glass windows in its chapel showing Jesus blessing apostle-like figures with arms full of sail and rigging.

In the 1950s, as the merchant marine declined in size and presence, the sailors’ apartments were absorbed into the McBurney YMCA, and in 1967 the building at 550 W. 20th Street was sold to New York State for $2 million. At first, Bayview became one of dozens of treatment centers under the state’s Narcotic Addiction Control Commission (NARCC), in which inmates (known as “clients”) participated in intensive drug treatment until they graduated to part-time facilities and parole.

In 1967, Chelsea was still full of schoolteachers, garment workers and meatpackers; the Chelsea piers still had some traffic, and the neighborhood’s median income was around $5,000 (in 2005 dollars). “It was the kind of neighborhood where we’d play pick-up ball in the street,” says longtime Chelsea resident David Ferguson. A few years later, he said, a youth center for juveniles living in state custody opened up on his street, West 22nd Street. “It used to be a bordello of some sort,” said Ferguson, “so we lobbied and brought this [juvenile youth center] in…I used to run a film program there, and we had a local professional coming in each week to teach some aspect of filmmaking.” While that center eventually shut down by the mid-1970s, replaced by a home for the indigent, it stood as one of numerous transitional and correctional institutions, like Covenant House, that found fairly straightforward acceptance in the mix of West Chelsea life.

New York’s prisons swelled after 1974, as the now-famous “Rockefeller laws” imposed mandatory minimum sentences for a range of drug offenses. The state closed many NARCC centers and claimed the beds at Bayview, first for a men’s minimum-security facility, then in 1978, for its current incarnation as a full-time medium-security prison for women. The former YMCA kitchens and recreation areas were converted for the general-confinement prisoners, and the first women arrived that fall.

Like most prisons in the United States, Bayview is classified as medium-security, which means that its inmates have 10 years or less remaining in their sentences, either from having served out most of their time in a higher-security facility or from having shorter sentences to begin with. Most of Bayview’s occupants are among the 80 percent of women in New York State’s prisons convicted of nonviolent drug or property offenses, according to the Correctional Association of New York, which also reports that 82 percent of women inmates report having had a substance abuse problem prior to their arrest. Many, perhaps most, were also survivors of domestic violence (a 1999 survey at Bedford Hills, a maximum-security prison in upper Westchester County, showed 90 percent had survived physical or sexual abuse in their lifetime). The new prison thus immediately brought in StayNOut, a privately operated drug treatment program already operating in many of the state’s prisons. Soon after, a Transitional Services Program was implemented to help the women navigate a web of transitional services, from counseling to nutrition to affordable housing.

By then, Catherine Cook had already known for at least five years that she wanted to make her career in the prison system. “I grew up in corrections,” she said last week. “My father was an administrator at Sing Sing.” Like police families, she added, there are corrections families, and her first summer job was also at Sing Sing. “It was a hell of a summer, but I kept going back,” she laughed. “Like my father says, ‘The gates close behind you, and you know what you want to do with the rest of your life.’” After graduation, she began her way up the ranks, working at correctional facilities in Beacon, Bedford Hills and Fulton before returning to Sing Sing as deputy superintendent for programs.

In the mid-1980s, in the aftermath of a scandal involving sex between guards and prisoners, Bayview cleaned house and expanded all its programs, bringing in the Junior League of New York and other agencies to help with tutoring, counseling and empowerment.

Bayview also had many, many more prisoners on work release, like many other facilities around the country. “At Fulton, I had 1,300 prisoners on work release,” said Cook. Nationally, programs for prisoners—drug treatment programs, and the ability of inmates to work toward college degrees while in prison—were by then showing some success in cutting recidivism rates, especially when well funded and supported.

In 1986, Bayview also became known for a high-profile job training program, still in operation, wherein some inmates are trained to answer routine customer service calls for the Department of Motor Vehicles. The program was later included in a few critical articles about the “prison-industrial complex,” since most of the revenue goes to support the upkeep of the prison, but is still going strong. (Chelsea Now was unable to observe the program in action, though we were advised by Superintendent Cook that they answer only information requests, and any actual transactions were routed elsewhere, where “civilians take care of it.”)

Then came the tough-on-crime wave of the early 1990s. The new hot trend was “shock incarceration” boot camps, work release programs were slashed, and Pell Grants and student loans for prisoners were eliminated in 1994. New York State began to require all prisoners to enter GED and drug treatment programs as a condition for parole. But Bayview continued its development of resources for prisoners, just as the neighborhood was changing around them. By then, Chelsea’s gallery scene was emerging and housing prices were soaring, while the 80-year-old Chelsea piers gave way to the commercial venture of the same name, a 21st-century recreation center. Volunteers from the Piers began to come across the street to Bayview, where they still run fitness programs for some inmates.

At Sing Sing, Catherine Cook found a way around the Pell Grant crisis and set up college programs, getting support from local donors and convincing Nyack Community College and Mercy College to donate their services. “When Pell grants end,” she said with a wry smile, “you find other people who want to support such a program.” Sing Sing now has associates’ degrees, bachelors’ degrees and even a masters’ degree in theology, as well as the full range of treatment programs.

Cook said she was pleased, and a little relieved, when she came to Bayview in 2005 and found a lot of programs already in place and growing. A new requirement that all prisoners work toward their GED meant that the classrooms were full. The Junior League had created a Center for Learning in 1993, bringing in academics and professionals to teach classes, and was in the process of getting a degree program started. And StayNOut, the drug treatment program, was graduating class after class.

Sandra Gomez, a counselor with the Transition Assistance Program, escorted Chelsea Now to the building’s upper floors, the first of which still feel more like offices than a prison, at least until the doors close. The inmates themselves wore loose, durable olive-green jumpsuits, giving the place a military feel, whether they were poring over Microsoft Power Point in the business skills class or sitting in their dormitory rooms, making sure they meet the neatness standards set by Corrections. The rooms themselves, perhaps 10x12 feet, were sparsely decorated, with schoolbooks piled neatly.

Julia Jenkins, who teaches General Business, showed off her students’portfolios, full of sleekly designed brochures and presentations, resumes and business letters. The bulletin boards in her classroom were split between Black and Women’s History Months, St. Patrick’s Day, and contained a note exclaiming, “Thank you, Ms. Jenkins!” Women take her classes, Jenkins said, at all ages and levels; some even have college degrees. But most of them do it while studying for their GED, and Jenkins said she prides herself on nudging them forward with her writing assignments.

Further upstairs, two classrooms were full of very young women, all getting ready for a GED practice test in preparation for the actual exam this summer. In one room Cyril Lachmansingh, a graying man with round glasses and a wary smile, was leading the girls in the mysteries of simple algebra. They looked like high school students anywhere—half bored, half concentrating hard.

“He’s the best teacher here,” said one young women, her hair curving toward her collar. “Before, I didn’t understand fractions. But he - he taught me a lot. He’s very good.”

“They have worked very hard,” said Lachmansingh, suppressing a smile.

Then it was time for everyone in general confinement to go to one of the prison’s two community rooms for count-up, the equivalent of roll call. The halls filled with women hurrying into elevators and stairwells. The only group that wasn’t going to count up was the packed group on the 8th floor, those in the full-time StayNOut program, who spend all their time in treatment, fighting to get and stay sober.

Cook gave the reason for this frenetic activity: “My thought is this...everyone gets out of prison. Someone’s in jail, eventually they will get out,” she said. “You want someone out there who’s bitter and uneducated? Or someone who’s been able to have the opportunity to work hard, and maybe get to a different level?”

Second in the series: Next steps, from treatment to college