‘The Tombs’ to shutter
A jail on Rikers Island also closing in city consolidation
It’s doom for the notorious Tombs.
Department of Correction officials announced Friday that the city will shut down the decrepit Manhattan Detention Complex — better known as the “The Tombs ” — before the end of November, the Daily News has learned.
The agency will also shutter the Otis Bantum Correctional Center on Rikers Island, according to a letter signed by Correction Department Commissioner Cynthia Brann and Chief of Department Hazel Jennings.
“The city is continuing the process of moving to four safer, modern borough based facilities close to our communities,” the letter read.
“We are also taking advantage of the significant reduction in our current and projected jail population to continue closing older facilities that pose the most pressing administrative and structural problems.”
“After careful consideration ... we will be closing [these] two facilities,” the letter said, citing a slew of issues including the number of available beds, programming space and air conditioning as reasons for the decision.
“Centralizing the population in our remaining facilities will not result in more densely populated housing units,” the letter continued, noting that uniformed and civilian staffers will be reassigned to other facilities and commands over the next 30 days.
The city’s remaining seven facilities — six at Rikers Island and one in the Bronx, which do not include the prison wards at Bellevue Hospital and Elmhurst Hospital — will house inmates from the shuttered jails.
The city’s jail population is just over 4,400, up from an historic low of 3,981 in May, city data show. Of that number, 434 inmates are housed at the Tombs while another 329 are at OBCC, officials said.
There are also 748 correction officers stationed at Manhattan Detention Complex, and another 857 at OBCC, meaning those in the jails will be jammed into close quarters come winter, said Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association President Benny Boscio.
“[This] would throw inmates and officers on top of those who are already in the
other jails, increasing the density and compromising our ability to prepare for a second wave of COVID-19 that has already emerged in Brooklyn and Queens,” Boscio said, calling the decission “reckless.”
“Now is the time to leverage our low inmate population to decrease the density inn our facilities,” he continuued.
“With the second wave of COVID-19 already upon us, this is definitely not the time to be closing jails and compromising the safety of everyone in those jails. It’s a recipe for disaster. Correction officers’ lives are not exppendable.”
The iconic Lower Manhattan complex — known for the skywalk bridge connecting its North and South towers that adjoin the Centre Street courthouses — was completed in 1990.
But The Tombs first earned the moniker before the mid-19th century, when the city’s Halls of Justice and House of Detention were built on the block.