SHUTTER ISLAND
Mayor vows to close Rikers
“It will take many years” to close troubled Rikers Island jail, “but it will happen,” Mayor de Blasio said Friday.
MAYOR DE BLASIO, in a sudden announcement soaring with optimism but short on specifics, insisted Friday that the city will close Rikers Island.
“It will take many years. It will take many tough decisions along the way, but it will happen,” de Blasio said at a City Hall press conference.
Rikers has become a symbol of dysfunction and despair in recent years as harrowing tales of abuse and neglect have piled up.
The mayor’s promise to replace it with smaller jails scattered around the city, while ambitious, was light on details.
Few ideas draw more opposition from community groups than the prospect of new jails going up in their neighborhoods.
De Blasio didn’t say where the new facilities would be built or how the city will pay for what will be a massively expensive undertaking. The mayor acknowledged that shutting down the complex will take at least 10 years — long after he leaves office.
The jail’s population will first have to be whittled down to 5,000 inmates from the current 9,300. “We will need a few more facilities,” he said. “I would argue the fewer, the better.”
The plan laid out by de Blasio mirrors the recommendation released by a blue-ribbon commission studying the future of Rikers. The 27-member panel, led by former New York State Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman, was expected to tell City Hall on Sunday that it favored replacing Rikers with several smaller facilities spread across the five boroughs. The projected cost: $10.6 billion.
Criminal justice reform advocates hailed the mayor’s announcement.
Legal Aid Society lead attorney Seymour James described Rikers as a “long scourge to this city besetting justice, perpetuating recidivism and destroying black and brown communities.”
“We join New Yorkers from every borough today flushed with many emotions that the dream of closing Rikers Island will finally become reality,” James added.
Glenn Martin, head of the CLOSE rikers campaign, acknowledged that bringing the vision to reality won’t be easy.
“I feel like the work begins here,” Martin said. “We got him on the record. We can hold him accountable.” Not everyone was celebrating. Robert Gangi, a mayoral contender and head of the Police Reform Organizing Project, said the city would be better off devoting the money to more “pressing needs” such as education. “We oppose allocating hundreds of millions to build new jails,” Gangi said.
The mayor’s vow marked a stark about-face.
In February 2016, he called the idea of closing Rikers, backed strongly by Gov. Cuomo, a “noble concept” but too expensive and impractical to pull off.
The mayor said Friday he changed his mind because of the city’s lower incarceration rates.
But de Blasio’s new stance could have political costs. He’s now pushing for the creation of more jails and homeless shelters in an election year.
Hizzoner does have the backing of City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, who called Rikers “a stain on our criminal justice system.”
The movement to shutter Rikers gained steam following the suicide of Kalief Browder, 22.
Browder killed himself in June 2015 after spending three years at Rikers, mostly in solitary confinement, without trial. He was just 16 when he was arrested for stealing a backpack — charges that were later dropped.
Browder’s brother Akeem said he welcomed the plan to close the complex but would rather see the city devote resources to alternatives to incarceration. “It wasn’t the walls or the conditions at Rikers that killed Kalief,” said Akeem Browder, 34. “It was the human beings behind the walls that abused and ultimately drove him to commit suicide.”
The Lippman-led commission noted that Rikers — a 413-acre former dump accessible only by a narrow bridge — is beset by both a “deep-seated culture of violence” and a remote location that results in massive transport costs.
“Rikers Island essentially functions as an expensive penal colony,” the commission said in a 146-page report.
De Blasio said it was too early to say how the city might redevelop Rikers, noting only that it would represent “a really interesting piece of real estate.”