Rikers Island likely won’t close by 2027 deadline, NYC official says

A senior New York City official acknowledged Monday that Rikers Island, one of the nation’s most notorious prisons, would most likely not be closed by the legally mandated deadline of August 2027.

The candid admission from Jacques Jiha, the city’s budget director, reflected Mayor Eric Adams’ opposition to the closure of the Rikers jail complex and the city’s nearly invisible progress in building the four smaller city facilities that would replace it.

“We know this will not happen in 2027,” Mr Jiha told the council, referring to the completion of the replacement prisons.

The Council voted in 2019 to close Rikers Island and replace it with four smaller prisons that would be more humane in design and, because they were not on an island in the middle of the East River, more accessible to the lawyers and relatives of the detainees.

Bill de Blasio, Mr. Adams’ predecessor, ultimately backed the plan, which included an August 2027 deadline.

When Mr. Adams ran for office, he said he supported closing Rikers, but he also joined the union representing corrections officers, which was critical of the effort. As mayor, Mr. Adams’ position has evolved. He has cast doubt on the wisdom of the plan, noting that the capacity of the replacement prisons was too small to house the current Rikers population.

The mayor has also argued that lawmakers should come up with a “Plan B” — one of many clear indications that he had no intention of following Plan A.

A year ago, a public notice in an administrative release indicated that the planned Brooklyn jail would not be completed until 2029, a development reported by The Daily News. A spokesperson for the mayor claimed at the time that the administration would still meet the 2027 deadline.

The three other prisons, planned for Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx, appear to be further behind.

“This is the first thing they say about the other three prisons,” said Elizabeth Glazer, former director of the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice under Mr. de Blasio and founder of Vital City, a policy research group at Columbia Law. School, who described the government’s typical information-sharing practices as “samizdat”-like. She added that because the city had not issued contracts for these jails, “it seemed unlikely that they would meet the deadline.”

“As we have said repeatedly, our government will always follow the law,” said Charles Lutvak, spokesman for the mayor. “Our administration supports the closure of Rikers Island under a plan that ensures the dignity, safety and care of all justice-involved New Yorkers, but it is clear that the plan approved under the previous administration has created serious challenges to our ability to Keeping New Yorkers safe. .”

Tina Luongo, lead attorney in the criminal defense practice at the Legal Aid Society, and Darren Mack, co-director of Freedom Agenda, an organization that advocates for the closure of Rikers, both argued that the mayor’s administration should not disobey the law. law.

“The legal requirement to close Rikers by 2027 is very real, and so is the human suffering that will continue as long as it is open,” Mr. Mack said. “Rikers should have been closed a long time ago, and prolonging its existence makes no moral or financial sense no matter how many excuses this administration tries to make.”

When the plan was adopted in 2019, the city’s jail population was about 7,000. During the Covid pandemic it dropped to under 4,000, and then get up again. Today the prison population is approximately 6,200.

The jails that would replace Rikers Island were designed to house a total of 3,300 people — leading city officials to acknowledge in February that city facilities would need to be larger than originally planned, according to Gothamist.

Benny Boscio, the president of the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, said union leaders believed the plan to close Rikers was “flawed for many reasons, but primarily because the new prisons could only accommodate a total of 3,300 beds in a city with 9 million inhabitants. .”

In October, City Council President Adrienne Adams re-created the independent commission that formulated the original plan to close Rikers in an effort to maintain momentum to close the facility.

“We really don’t want anyone else to die behind those walls,” Ms Adams said at the time. “This is definitely a priority for me.”

The city, which is fighting calls for a federal takeover of the prison, is still struggling to control conditions there. Last year, nine detainees died in custody, according to A dashboard maintained by the office of the city comptroller, Brad Lander. His office characterized the city’s jails as “a moral stain on the city.”

On Monday, Mr. Jiha also said that the cost of closing Rikers and building new jails had risen from the roughly $8 billion the city had already set aside.

“We need to add another $4 billion,” Mr Jiha said.