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Friday, March 29, 2024

NYC Commission Votes to Build New Jails with Goal of Shutting Rikers Island

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By: Michael Mustiglione

New York’s City Planning Commission has voted to construct new jails in Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn. The goal: to shut Rikers Island.

The plan has been passed along to the City Council for final approval.

As the city’s web site https://rikers.cityofnewyork.us/the-plan/ explains, “Our plan is to close Rikers Island and replace it with a smaller network of modern jails. Our goal is a jail system that is smaller, safer, and fairer – one consistent with the overall criminal justice system we are building in New York City, in which crime continues to fall, the jail population drops significantly, and all New Yorkers are treated with dignity. Our newer system of jails will be focused on helping those incarcerated find a better path in life and maintain access to community supports. And it will ensure that officers have safer places to work and more support. This website includes a credible path toward these goals.

“This plan will not be easy,” the site continues. “Historically, community opposition, land use requirements, and the high cost of acquiring and developing new land have prevented the City from siting new jails or even expanding existing jails. And it will not be fast. We estimate it will take at least a decade. In order to achieve our goal, we must have a jail population that is small enough to be housed safely off Rikers Island. On an average day in 2017, there were a total of approximately 9,400 people incarcerated in city jails with space for just 2,300 people in existing facilities in the boroughs. To close Rikers and replace it with a new, smaller network of jails, we will have to continue to bring the jail population down while ensuring that we sustain the City’s historically low crime rate – which is down 76% from 1990.”

City fathers believe these obstacles “are surmountable. And we are committed to the transparent partnership with New Yorkers across the city and with government, including the City Council and the State, required to close Rikers Island for good.”

The plan has attracted “tentative support citywide but also triggered opposition in each community. Residents in the Bronx pushed the city to select a different site for the facility. Meanwhile, residents in Queens, Brooklyn and Manhattan have argued for smaller facilities than those proposed,” Crain’s New York Business is reporting. “An activist group called No New Jails—which led the most-vocal opposition at Tuesday’s hearing—has argued that the city can close Rikers without building new jails, by locking up even fewer people than the city aims to. The money for the plan, the group says, would be better allocated toward other community needs.”

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