Playground controversies usually involve bickering parents, unruly dogs or bullies.
One exception is at the Tompkins Houses, a city housing project in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, where an orange jungle gym adorned with the word “Jail,” a cell door and prison bars has, six years after its installation, set off outrage in the neighborhood and the blogosphere, along with a hasty official response.
Children may play cops and robbers all the time, but putting a pretend jail in a public housing playground in a historically black community struck some residents as an insult.
“We started complaining because it was like promoting kids to go to jail,” said Natasha Godley, 37, who has a 6-year-old son.
NYTThe controversy elicited this op-ed piece by Errol Louis:
Hats off to a group of alert Brooklyn activists for exposing the shocking scene at the Tompkins Houses: a junglegym for toddlers - with a fake prison door, marked JAIL in bright colors.
...
New York, like too many American cities, cynically preaches fairy tales of hope and opportunity to vast numbers of young people who, in reality, travel an obstacle course of failing schools, scarce jobs and segregated neighborhoods.
They also must deal with a society that says, in myriad ways, they are expected to falter, fail and end up in jail.
The NAACP and the Children's Defense Fund call it a "school-to-prison pipeline." I just call it sick.
Brooklyn playground designed as prison: Just when will we stop setting up kids to fail? 
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