The prisoners we should put on Rikers

The decision announced Friday by Mayor de Blasio to endorse the central recommendation of an independent commission and close the sprawling jail complex on Rikers Island — by downsizing the city’s pretrial population and housing the remaining detainees and inmates in local jails close to courts — could be a major advance.

But the plan is missing one critical piece that would mark a real step forward for thousands of families throughout the five boroughs. Namely, we should keep Rikers open to incarcerate people convicted of crimes who would otherwise be sent upstate.

Locating pretrial detention facilities in the boroughs rather than on Rikers Island, which is nearly impossible for attorneys and court officials to access, will make the city’s criminal justice system more efficient and responsive to the values of our people and to the commands of the Constitution.

People who care about fairness and decency in criminal justice should commend former state Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman, and also de Blasio and City Council Speaker Mark-Viverito, for embracing the plan’s main goal.

If the city follows its recommendations and replaces Rikers-based detention with borough-based jails, no longer will New Yorkers charged with crimes but not convicted be banished to a small island far from courts and communities. No longer will New York City taxpayers be forced to pay millions for fleets of buses to transport inmates on and off the island for court appearances.

Moreover, no longer will detainees be housed in ill-maintained and inadequate facilities. The horrors and brutality that detainees have suffered on Rikers Island has made that place reminiscent of Devil’s Island. Missing from the proposal to close Rikers for pretrial detainees, however, is any provision to use this singular opportunity to relocate New York State prisoners — inmates who have been convicted of crimes and are serving their sentences — from far upstate prisons like Attica and Clinton to a prison closer to their home communities.

The sprawling New York prison system is broken. Recidivism rates are high, brutality is common and programs are limited. The hallmark of this broken system is that most inmates are housed hundreds of miles away from their homes.

For example, 58% of incarcerated individuals from the city’s metropolitan region are in prisons more than 200 miles from their homes. And remarkably, 27% of the entire state prison population is more than 300 miles from the county of commitment.

The location of New York prisons so far away makes maintaining meaningful family ties almost impossible. These ties are strongly associated with successful reintegration, lower recidivism rates and improved behavior while incarcerated.

This distance is particularly brutal for the approximately 105,000 children in the state who have a parent in jail or prison. To visit parents, these children must endure grueling overnight bus trips to and from the far-flung prisons.

Indeed, Gov. Cuomo has proposed cutting back visitation rights for maximum-security prisoners from seven to three days a week — all to save $2.6 million.

In the remote New York prisons, programs are difficult to deliver and prisoners are under the control of staffers drawn from areas culturally and racially different from the prison population, increasing a sense of isolation and alienation among the incarcerated that is antithetical to rehabilitation.

National standards provide that, whenever possible, prisons should be located “near the population centers from which the bulk of their prisoners are drawn, and in communities where there are resources to supplement treatment programs for prisoners and to provide staff for security, programming and treatment.”

With the land made available by the closing of Rikers Island for pretrial detainees and those serving short sentences, it is not unimaginable to contemplate what before was unthinkable: using the space made available to bring New York City prisoners home.

Building a modern prison on the land left vacant by the evacuation of Rikers’ present populations would be a truly transformative step, benefiting immeasurably the incarcerated and their families, and ultimately all of us. We should not let this moment pass.