NYC City Council to Vote on Rikers Island Jail Closure
The New York City Council is expected to take a vote Thursday on whether to shut down Rikers Island and build four smaller lockups located in densely populated neighborhoods.
City officials proposed shutting down Rikers by 2027 following years of complaints about violence by guards and gang members, mistreatment of the mentally ill and juveniles and unjustly long detention for minor offenders.
Advocates for the closure have also argued that the island facility near La Guardia Airport — accessible only by a narrow bridge — is too isolated, cutting off inmates from the outside world in a way that hinders oversight and rehabilitation.
Criminal justice reform activists also support the closure of the jail but they oppose the construction of four new jails in the city's boroughs.
Council member Jimmy Van Bramer on Wednesday released a statement saying "Build new jails or keep Rikers open is a false choice. We know that if more jail cells are built, those cells will be filled, and it will predominantly impact black and brown communities. The City should be focused on decarceration, not investing $10 billion back into the failed, racist prison industrial complex."
Earlier this week, a new report by the City Council and the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice predicts New York City's average daily jail population will be cut in half by 2026.
“With the lowest rate of incarceration in any major city, we are disproving the notion that we must arrest and imprison our way to (a) safer city," Mayor Bill de Blasio told the New York Daily News.
The city projects declines in the number of people charged with violent felonies, people charged with non-violent felonies and people charged with misdemeanors, the report said. State parole violations are also expected to drop, the report found, although that number rose since 2014.
"This is the culmination of years of hard work to move away from the failed policies of mass incarceration," City Council Speaker Corey Johnson tweeted Sunday.
Photo Credit: Getty Images
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