When it comes to dubbing prisons, Americans don’t like to get excited.
Alcatraz stands on a rocky island off the coast of San Francisco, which, added to its (almost) hermetic character, ended up earning it the somewhat witty nickname of “The Rock”. Something similar happens to Vernon C. Bain Correctional Centera gigantic “barge penitentiary” moored off the coast of the Bronx: it’s a ship, so people refer to it as… —Exactly!— The Boat.
It may not take the cake when it comes to nickname ingenuity, but The Boat, yes it stands out in something: size. With a length of 190.5 meters 38 m wide, five storeys high and with capacity for about 800 inmatesIt is the largest floating prison in the world.
So it was recognized years ago the Guiness World Records, which describes The Boat as “the largest operating prison facility” on a barge with 870 beds. The boat is right in front of the huge Rikers Island prison complex, the largest in New York City and located on a 167-hectare island located in the East River, between Queens and the Bronx.
A boat of Guinness
That The Boat is anchored today on the New York coast responds, to a large extent, to the increase in crime and inmates that it unleashed the crack epidemic of the 1980s. Given the growth of the inmate population at Rikers, already close to its peak, the authorities decided to equip themselves with more cells; but they ran into a problem: space. Or its scarcity, rather.
The solution –details goes to boats— passed through floating prisons such as Bibby Resolution and Bibby Venture, originally built as floats for the oil industry and refurbished.
The best known, by far, however, is The Boat, commissioned in 1989 to the Avondale Shipyard in Louisiana and launched in 1992, once anchored at its destination. Addition 16 dormitories and a hundred cells to house medium or high security prisoners. The infrastructure also includes, among other services, a medical center, gym, chapels and library.
Its implementation was not without controversy. Because of the solution it represented, because of the location —several were valued— and above all because of its execution, which ended up taking much longer and costing considerably more money than originally planned: it was contracted with a budget that did not reach 126 million and the amount ended surpassing 161.
Although initially it was proposed as a temporary solution and it closed its doors for a short period of time, the truth —explained New York Times in a report published in 2019— is that he ended up prolonging his activity and joining the region’s prison system.
A year ago at least housed 661 inmates and in 2020 it had a more than remarkable infrastructure, with 317 workers and an annual cost of about $24 million.
Such a deployment does not make it immune to escapes, as a 30-year-old inmate who managed to evade surveillance of The Boat and stopped shortly after.
as long as it goes on the debate about your futurewhat The Boat does leave is a picture worthy of Hollywood: a similar huge barge, slide TNYTto a gigantic Lego.
Of course, with tenants on board that little they have fun.
Images | Reivax (Flickr), Julie McCoy (Wikimedia) Y Jim. Henderson (Wikimedia)
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