A “humanitarian crisis” could ensue if Rikers Island is replaced by the under-sized borough-based jails championed by former Mayor Bill de Blasio, a new Manhattan Institute study finds.
Four, 825-person facilities would be thousands of beds short of housing the roughly 5,600 people housed in city jails on an average night, a population which could increase if crime rises in upcoming years ahead of Rikers slated 2027 closing, the 34-page report notes.
“The result will either be severe overcrowding, creating conditions that may be even worse than those on Rikers, or the release of many hundreds of dangerous or flight-prone offenders onto the streets, exacerbating the city’s crime and disorder problems,” the right-leaning think tank argues.
While “refurbishing or repurchasing closed jails; constructing small additional borough jails. in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and The Bronx “and ‘boarding out’ detainees to Long Island and Westchester County” could boost city jail capacity, the report argues it would hardly be enough to replace Rikers.
Multiple facilities on the island collectively house 15,000 or so people serving short sentences or awaiting trial, though it has been plagued by violence that has inspired calls for a federal takeover.
“Charging ahead with the borough-based jails plan is a recipe for disaster. It will create a system incapable of detaining everyone it needs to detain,” the report states.
Mayor Adams has similarly argued how crime increases, and the unlikelihood of significant drops in the city jail population, ought to preclude Rikers from closing while noting the current city law required him to get the job done.
“I need the folks that are idealistic to deal with the realism of this,” he added. “People are committing violent crimes,” he said Aug. 31, according to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.
The City Council approved plans for the borough-based jails at the behest of Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2019.
“We have to have a plan B, because those who have created plan A, that I inherited, obviously didn’t think about a plan B … If we don’t drop down the prison population the way they thought we were, what do we do – no one answered that question,” Adams said.
A mayoral spokesperson did not provide immediate comment Thursday about how he would approach the issue of capacity at future jails in light of the report released by the Manhattan Institute on Thursday.
Some pols say the Manhattan Institute analysis fails to take into account how jailing fewer people for minor crimes in particular might make it easier to close Rikers.
“Instead of building more and bigger jails, New Yorkers deserve a commitment of more resources to community-based solutions such as improved access to medical and mental health care, increased use of proven restorative justice practices, safe and affordable housing, and real job opportunities with living wages,” state Senate Corrections Chair Julia Salazar (D-Brooklyn) told The Post Thursday.
But longtime opponents of the plan say the study vindicates what they have been saying for years.
Queens Community Board 9 Land Use Chair Sylvia Hack, a longtime resident of Kew Gardens where one jail is planned, claimed Thursday that the Manhattan Institute study bolsters the argument that replacing Rikers with neighborhood jails is “pie in the sky.”
“All they’re doing is transferring Rikers to four residential communities that can’t provide what is needed,” Hack said.
“This is ludicrous. The city plan is not going to achieve its objectives.”
She also noted that about half of the city’s inmates who are incarcerated have some sort of mental health issue and the current Rikers phase-out plan doesn’t adequately address their problems.
Hack said a facility to serve inmates with mental health needs can be built on Rikers, which has the space, while the neighborhood sites do not.
“Rikers Island is 413 acres!,” she said.
The Community Preservation Coalition, which opposes the borough-based jails plan, estimated it would cost $15 billion, nearly double the $8.6 billion projected by the city.
“What we have here is expensive insanity,” Hack said.
