Olympic ‘prison’ on cold ground

Press, 20 January 1979, Page 22

Olympic ‘prison’ on cold ground

By

JONATHAN STEELE

in the “Guardian”

Imagine the outcry when the world learns that the host country for the 1980 Olympics village intends to convert the Olympic village into a prison when the games are over. Under the guise of providing temporary housing for athletes, the authorities are actually adding to their prison space. Will- the Russians stop at nothing? Actually, the country in question is the United States and the games are the Winter Olympics which' will be held at Lake Placid, New York. The analogy with the Russians is being deliberately pushed by an organisation called S.T.O.P. (Stop The Olympic Prison), which is appalled that the Olympic village is being built by the Federal Bureau of Prisons as a . medium-se-curity jail for 500 youths, mainly first offenders. - S.T.O.P. has some impressive backers, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Urban League (one of the bigger black organisations in the U.S.) and the New York State Council of Churches.

Some of them are opposed to any new prisons anywhere. Others feel that to put. a prison for young persons, who will mostly be poor, black, city dwellers, in an isolated rural area with a loeally recruited staff is going to exacerbate tensions. Relatives will have a hard time making the journey for visits. The guards will be inexperienced. The result may be another Attica, New York’s other penal experiment which was hailed enthusiastically when it started and later produced the bloodiest prison siege in Amercian history.

The fact that a building which is supposed to symbolise the Olympic movement will become a prison is only one of many ironies. There are others. The athletes will have less room than the eventual prisoners: 1800 athletes crammed into 500 cells. At. least they will have a discotheque, a round-the-clock cafeteria, a sauna, and a bank, which will be removed when the building is transformed for its permanent use.

Some foreign Olympic committees, including the Austrians and East Germans, have already complained about the smallness of the rooms. But ironically 7 most of them welcome the double chainlink fence topped with barbed wire. Since the hostage-taking at the Munich Olympics in 1972, security has become inseparable from the Olympics, The idea for a prison came from the area’s congressman, Robert McEEweh, and the local Olympic organising committee, which consists mainly of business people who feel the Olympics and the numerous construction contracts can only benefit Lake Placid’s economy. For years they have been lobbying to be awarded the Winter Games. Lake Placid was host to. the 1932 Olympics and still had an old ski jump and bob-sled run available for renovation. To satisfy emocratic norms, a referendum was held in Lake Placid, though not in the surrounding area. The use of the village as a prison was not mentioned. That came later after New York State and the Federal Government had agreed to help to finance construction of other facilities. The local organisers could not convert the Olympic village into housing as Montreal or Munich did, since Lake Placid has a population of only 3000. They say they approached Ideal colleges to see if dormitory space was needed. They also suggested

storing computer records there. No one was interested.

At that point Congressman McEwen conveniently ran into the Bureau of Prisons, which had already been rebuffed by at least six communities in the north-east of the United States in its search for a new prison site. The Carter Administration asked Congress last year to transfer S22M to the Bureau of Prisons to build the prison. With only a handful of members raising objections, the funds were approved.

Some local residents claim that the normal procedures werecircuited and that there ought to have been public hearings on the use of the village as a prison. Others claim that federal and state environmental standards .were violated. The Olympic village is already half built and S.T.O.P. is pushing the idea of a different “after-use.” In Congress, a Republican member from New York, Hamilton Fish, has been considering whether to ask the Attorney-General to set up a Cabinet-level study into alternatives.

A tentative solution would be to use half, the building for the northeastern training centre which the Olympic committee wants and to rent the other half for storage space or dormitory use. Congressman McEwen, the local member, is not against the idea of a further. study but his office is optimistic that an alternative can be found.