As we’ve said for years, the August 2027 deadline set by the City Council to close Rikers Islands will not be met. Now comes a lengthy report published by the Independent Rikers Commission that states the obvious: the offshore complex, plagued by violence and apathy to the level of unconstitutionality, will not close by the date set six years ago by the City Council. So that law better be changed.
At this point, it’s a question of logistics: the four borough-based jails meant to replace Rikers will not be ready on time — even the first expected to be completed, in Brooklyn, is slated for 2029 — and even if they were, they cannot hold the city’s current almost-7,000 detainees, about a third greater the planned facilities’ capacity.
There’s a bit of a chicken and egg problem here. It shouldn’t be a precedent that the city gets to fail to comply with local laws via delays and procedural lethargy, but it is also incumbent on the Council to pass laws that can reasonably be followed.
The 2027 deadline rested on a number of assumptions that haven’t exactly borne out, most notably that the jail population would continue to decline. That’s probably an outcome that everyone wants — because either crime rates have gone down or we’ve found better ways to deal with some of the issues that land people in Rikers, like a lack of mental health options, or both — but it’s not one that’s guaranteed.
So everyone’s got some responsibility in this. The Council’s deadline was in retrospect, and maybe predictably, unrealistic, and the city has also not moved particularly aggressively to find, plan and build out alternative sites. The best thing to do now is reset; let the mayor and the Council come together again and lay out a new, achievable deadline, along with specific steps to reach that deadline and deliverable, enforceable stages.
Of course, this conversation is happening against the backdrop of a correctional system that remains mismanaged and dangerous, and a change of venue is not going to magically fix that. Rikers suffers acutely from its physical characteristics, ranging from the broad — it is hard to reach for families and attorneys and its isolation lets it stay out of mind for our leaders — to the very discrete, like the fact that doors won’t lock and detainees can essentially pull weapons from the walls. The conditions themselves are certainly an impediment to safety and health, but not the only one.
If and when the Rikers population is moved to safer borough-based jails, the officials overseeing those facilities shouldn’t be the same ones that have presided over the long-standing mess at Rikers. As we’ve said before, even the well-meaning ones — and current Correction Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie seems at least more committed to protecting staff and detainees than her predecessor, who viewed his job more as protecting the administration — are fighting a battle that might not be winnable.
The culture and system of DOC has solidified into this morass of unaccountability and negligence that can probably only be excised from without, by an official not tethered to it or the city’s broader political strictures. That means a receiver, who we hope Manhattan Federal Judge Laura Taylor Swain will appoint expeditiously. Only when Rikers is closed and its replacements are run by fundamentally different leadership can we begin to move towards a humane DOC.