‘We must go looking for people to fill up those jail cells’

Signal Cleveland, July 8, 2023

Opponents of a new jail in Garfield Heights asked Cuyahoga County Council members on Thursday to consider other ways the county can spend the hundreds of millions proposed for the jail.

During public comment at the Thursday evening meeting, Garfield Heights residents and members of the Cuyahoga County Jail Coalition raised several concerns related to the new jail.

Azzurra Crispino, with Prison Abolition Prisoners Support and a media liaison for the jail coalition, made a reference to the movie Field of Dreams.

“If there’s one big lesson that I learned from that is, ‘If you build it, they will come,’” she said. “And if we’re talking about jail, if you build it, you will fill it."

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