Shut Rikers, panel to say
Wants smaller jails throughout city
A BLUE-RIBBON commission studying the future of Rikers Island will recommend closing the troubled jail and replacing it with several smaller facilities across the city, sources told the Daily News.
The 27-member panel, led by former New York State Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman, has been studying the issue for more than a year, even as more tales of horror emerged from within the jail’s halls and cells.
But according to sources the commission has reached its conclusion, and is prepared to share its recommendation with Mayor de Blasio and City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, who appointed Lippman.
An official said the recommendations will be shared with City Hall on Sunday.
The mayor, Lippman and Mark-Viverito huddled Thursday night on the mayor’s side of City Hall.
“I can just tell you that we have our usual process of keeping people informed of what’s going on and taking a lot of feedback,” Lippman said as he walked out the front door of City Hall.
City Correction Commissioner Joseph Ponte was at City Hall at least twice this week. The News spotted him walking in on Tuesday and on Wednesday, a few hours before de Blasio held a press conference announcing reentry services for Rikers inmates.
Spokesmen for de Blasio and Mark-Viverito declined to comment. But a commission member said the recommendations include supervised release of some of the detainees, new smaller jails across the five boroughs and a bail system overhaul.
The source said the transition would take 10 years to complete.
The shutdown-Rikers movement was triggered by a string of violent incidents, and the suicide of Kalief Browder, a teenager from the Bronx, who was wrongfully jailed for three years.
Browder, 22, was arrested shortly before his 17th birthday on May 15, 2010. He was charged with stealing a backpack but insisted he was innocent.
The case was never brought to trial and Browder was finally released from jail after three years — two of those years were in solitary confinement.
Browder used an air-conditioning cord and bed sheets to hang himself in June 2015.
Rapper Jay Z, who briefly met Browder after he read about his plight in a New Yorker piece, produced a six-part documentary about the young man’s life.
The jail complex currently houses about 10,000 detainees, about 80% of whom are awaiting trial.
Thursday’s City Hall powwow came on the same day as a Board of Correction meeting where the latest violence in city jails was discussed. Correction Department brass asked the board to keep several jails on continued lockdown due to recent slashings.
Overall, slashings in city jails increased from 131 in 2015 to 155 in 2016, records show.
The spike in those attacks comes as Mayor de Blasio has earmarked more than $200 million to pay for everything from added correction officers to extra classes for inmates.
The commission report does not include any specific locations for where the new jails should be located, according to a source familiar with the review.