The Nation - News from Sept. 25, 1988
New York City shifted some jail inmates to Upstate prisons to ease crowding in cellblocks filled to 103% of designed capacity, officials said, and an emergency is likely to be declared because of the influx of 1,100 new prisoners within three weeks. A record 17,030 inmates filled the city’s cells to overflowing by the weekend. “We have never seen numbers like this before. Nobody has ever seen anything like this,” city Correction Commissioner Richard Koehler said. He cited arrests in a special effort against the crack cocaine trade in Queens as aggravating crowded conditions in the jails.
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