Public Housing, Sentencing Guidelines

You are right in calling for a review of public housing projects but wrong in terming Judge Rienzi’s sentence of the murder suspect as an “error of judgment” [“The duFresne Murder,” Editorial, February 2, 2005]. Projects and the resultant ghettos have historically proven to be festering grounds that breed juvenile delinquency. The causes include sole or even absent parents, social isolation, and disability that leave children and adolescents rudderless.

However, sentencing a 16-year-old, Rudy Fleming’s age when he was incarcerated, to a prison for adult offenders for any length of time can hardly have been a remedial exercise. Arguably, any length of time spent at such a facility by a troubled youth could have contributed to his becoming a hardened criminal. The callous murder of a promising young lady ought to spur New Yorkers to look critically not only at the social costs of public housing but also to look at sentencing guidelines for young teens.

VIJAY DANDAPANI
Manhattan

Wright in Baghdad

Re: “Frank Lloyd Wright in Baghdad,” John P. Avlon, Opinion, January 28-30, 2005. I was taken by Keith McCutcheon, a former Frank Lloyd Wright Fellowship member in the 1930s, to meet Mr. Wright in 1958, one year before his death. At Taliesin, in Spring Green, Wis., he showed us the model for the Baghdad Opera House and other structures, which he still had hopes would be built.

In Madison, where I was at the University of Wisconsin, he had been thwarted from building his Monona Terrace Project by a nasty member of the city assembly. It was to have encompassed a hotel, concert halls, and other public amenities, and “joined” the city with one of its four lakes. Finally, in the mid-1990s, the Monona Terrace Convention Center was built, scaled down but inspired by the original Wright design. I believe it signaled a 21st-century renaissance for Madison, which now has also built a brilliant new concert hall near the university campus.

In California, Texas, Wisconsin, Iowa, Tokyo – wherever he designed buildings for (with the possible exception of New York, for which he designed the Guggenheim Museum, which has transformed its part of Fifth Avenue, although many said it should have been in Central Park rather than across from it) – Wright took into consideration the local terrain and culture. (He also had an apartment at the Plaza Hotel in New York, so he may have known more about New York than New Yorkers. He was always ahead of his time.)

I am not sure that opera, per se, should be the primary resident of a Baghdad cultural center, but there is no question that building Wright’s buildings for Baghdad now, after a horrible period of cultural and economic withdrawal and now war, would transform Baghdad into a cultural oasis, which is exactly what Wright – America’s and one of the world’s greatest architects – had in mind.

RICHARD TORRENCE
Executive Director, Anchor-International Foundation
Manhattan

NYC’s School-to-Prison Pipeline

Readers of The New York Sun article “Education Dept. Seeks to Fight Crime Using System Like NYPD’s Compstat,” [Geoffrey Gray, New York, February 2, 2005.] might applaud the DOE’s new approach to address crime in our schools, but cops, surveillance cameras and Compstat system get us nowhere near an understanding of why schools have become unruly and unsafe.

Our First Aid Kit for School Safety should include smaller classrooms, teachers with ample support, counselors and innovative school programs that promote self-reflection, self-esteem, respect, and problem-solving skills.

Right now, New York City spends over $140,000 a year to incarcerate a young person and only $9,000 to $10,000 a year to educate them. We are, in fact, creating a school-to-prison pipeline when we invest in cops rather than teachers, surveillance cameras rather than counselors, Compstat system rather than community partnerships.

What you put in is what you get: let’s not prepare our students for a future in the state penitentiary.

KATE KYUNG JI RHEE
Ms. Rhee is a Fellow of the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy
Manhattan

‘The Great Liberator’

No matter what else happens from this point on, the elections in Iraq profoundly define George W. Bush’s place in history. Ronald Reagan was “The Great Communicator,” and, now, George W. Bush can be called “The Great Liberator.”

Constantinos E. Scaros
Cliffside Park, N.J.

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