Convict alley in Harlem nabe

BY ROBERT F. MOORE
DAILY NEWS POLICE BUREAU

Posted Sunday, March 18th 2007, 4:00 AM

The seven blocks along Lexington Ave. from 119th to 126th Sts. appear to be an unremarkable mix of aging apartment buildings, traffic and retail.

But the working-class neighborhood is home to the highest concentration of convicted criminals in the city. One in every 20 men in the area is sent to prison, according to an exhaustive analysis of incarceration data.

More than half the convicts will return to the same swath of East Harlem between Third and Park Aves. within four years of their arrest. They will be largely unemployed and addicted to drugs, and they'll be replaced in prison by dozens of other convicts in a cycle repeated in pockets all over the city with less severity, city officials said.

"I can see it in my church," said Cecil White, 66, who grew up in the neighborhood. "All women with no men. Kids with no fathers. That's the way it is in Harlem."

The conviction rates are exacerbated by the area's poverty - it is among the poorest neighborhoods in the city, officials said. It's also marked by high unemployment rates and a soaring number of diabetes cases, U.S. census and city Health Department records show.

An analysis of incarceration data from 2003, the latest numbers available, shows taxpayers spent more than $3.5 million in that year alone to keep criminals from the East Harlem neighborhood behind bars, according to the Brooklyn-based Justice Mapping Center.

"I would spend some of that money on housing, education, drug treatment and AIDS prevention," White, a piano player and retired clothier, said while standing outside a McDonald's at 125th St. and Lexington Ave. "Look at all these guys. They have nothing to do."

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To the many law-abiding, working-class families who live along the Lexington Ave. corridor in East Harlem, the constant presence of ex-cons presents a safety concern.

"These guys get out of prison and they can't get jobs," said Sandra Salta, 45, who works at a laundermat in the neighborhood. "They start committing more crimes. I think parole and probation officers need to do a better job of watching them when they get out."

About 3,750 people live in the census tract bounded by 126th and 119th Sts. and Third and Park Aves. About half of the residents are Hispanic, 46% black and 1% white. More than 15% are unemployed and fewer than half have a high school diploma.

And about 900 people in the zip code area that includes the census tract were locked inside city jails last year, Correction Department officials said.

Roughly a third of them were arrested for alleged drug crimes and seven were charged with murder or manslaughter, officials said.

"It's common. All too common," said Kasif Borden, 22, a women's clothing salesman who lives on Lexington Ave. near 121st St.

Borden said his 19-year-old brother was arrested for armed robbery about two years ago and will be in prison for about two more years.

"There are so many kids around here....They don't have any fathers. They don't have the guidance, the right upbringing. There are are no community centers. There's nothing to occupy the kids."

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Until a nonprofit group called the Justice Mapping Center pinpointed the home addresses of all New York City convicts, the extent of the problem in East Harlem was not known.

The findings raise questions about how the city and state spend crime prevention and correction dollars, city officials and law enforcement experts said.

"If you had $1 million and 23 criminals on one block, what would you do?" asked Eric Cadora, director of the Justice Mapping Center.

"Would you spend it all on sending them away for three or four years and have them come back? Or would you think about other ways of diversifying your investment?"

Correction Commissioner Martin Horn told the Daily News that the city, along with private organizations, should invest money in East Harlem, as well as other communities with high incarceration rates, to help break the cycle of poverty and crime.

The same logic, he said, is behind the Bloomberg administration's plan to reduce the number of prisoners on Rikers Island by housing 1,500 inmates in the now-closed Brooklyn House of Detention and an additional 2,000 in a new jail in the Bronx.

"The whole theory behind that is to have the inmates closer to the neighborhood services," Horn said, adding that private agencies are often in the best position to help inmates continue drug counseling and job training upon their release.

City Councilwoman Melissa Mark Viverito, a Democrat who represents the East Harlem area with the highest concentration of convicts in the city, said prisoners' relatives routinely ask her for help. Their concern usually rises out of the same issue.

"They're concerned about them being able to get jobs when they get out," Mark Viverito said.

She is hopeful Mayor Bloomberg's $150 million commitment to attack poverty in the city will have a tangible impact on her district. She also supports a recent City Council resolution to offer tax credits to employers who hire ex-cons.

"We have to find alternative ways to attack this problem," Mark Viverito said. "Otherwise, this will repeat itself from generation to generation."

rmoore@nydailynews.com

With Kerry Burke