New York City should create two new positions to oversee the closure of Rikers Island, which is mandated by law to take place by 2027, but is now already up to a half-decade behind schedule because the new borough jails won’t be finished in time, a commission appointed to review the plans said Wednesday.
The Independent Rikers Commission’s report said the plan needs a point person at City Hall focused only on closing Rikers and a similar official at the Correction Department charged with readying the agency for the four new borough jails.
The commission, made up of a range of jail experts and prominent New Yorkers in legal, business and political circles, also pressed in the report for expansion of the number of beds for the mentally ill, who make up half the jail population and might be the most pressing issue confronted in the system on a daily basis.
The Brooklyn jail is slated for completion in 2029, the Bronx jail in 2031, and Queens and Manhattan in 2032. The city could reduce that timeline by a year by having the design and construction work as one team, rather than separately as is the current structure, the panel argued.
The major hurdle is the size of the jail population — currently about 6,800 compared with the 3,300 ceiling originally envisioned in the Close Rikers plan and later expanded by the Adams administration to 4,500. The jail population has risen 32% since January 2022.
The panel called the current population “artificially inflated,” caused by court backlogs and the large number of mentally ill detainees.
Inmates at Rikers Island’s George Motchan Detention Center in 2017. (James Keivom / New York Daily News)
A combination of speedier case management by the state courts, electronic monitoring and expanded drug and mental health treatment could reduce the population to 4,500, the commission said. Another 500 beds would be in state psychiatric facilities and reserved for the severely mentally ill.
“None of this is guaranteed,” the panel wrote. “We freely admit that our projections are both science and art; the best educated guesses we can make under current circumstances. It is clear from experience that properly funded, properly staffed interventions with reasonable caseloads can make real progress.”
In a statement, Mayor Adams insisted he supports the closure of the jails on Rikers Island, but the original plan was “not realistic.”
“We are glad that the Lippman Commission is finally recognizing what we have been sounding the alarm on for years — the plan for Rikers was flawed and did not offer a realistic timeline,” he said.
Adams said the city has already been investing hundreds of millions in the Correction Department and he blamed the pandemic for the delayed construction timeline.
Mayor Adams visits Rikers Island in 2022. (Benny Polatseck/Mayoral Photography Office)
He also said laws passed during the de Blasio era “prohibit” the city from using emergency capital funds to bolster the jail system. “To leave the plan as is and deny us these funds hurts our staff and is inhumane to those in our custody,” the mayor said.
City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, a recently announced candidate for mayor, countered, “While success requires partnership and close collaboration from many stakeholders, our city’s mayoral administration must be willing to take concrete action steps and dedicate resources required to implement this blueprint, so another viable plan does not go unfulfilled.
“There is no shortcut to the work ahead, and there can be no discussions about the legal closure date without these types of commitments from the administration,” Adams said.
With Chris Sommerfeldt