From 2019 to 2023, former Mayor Bill de Blasio, and incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, and the city council have spent more than a billion dollars of taxpayers’ money for new programming including; housing, mental health care, violence prevention programs, and alternatives to incarceration. Since its inception and throughout the process, this has been a billion-dollar dream come true for some—but not for the Black and brown communities.
Former NYC Council Speaker Cory Johnson, incumbent Speaker Adrienne Adams, and members of the city council passed laws to close Rikers, that were not based on facts but on fear, lies, deception, and political expedience. The Close Rikers law was arbitrary, fiscally irresponsible, morally questionable, and legally unenforceable.
They promised to move the jails closer to Black and brown neighborhoods; reduce recidivism and lower the jail population. The jails never made it. The recidivism rate remains as high as the national average, and the jail population continues to grow. The count of detainees at Rikers and NYC jails stood above 6,000 at the end of June 2023, surpassing the capacity of the new borough jails, which is 3,300. To be clear, we should have borough-based jails but only if connected to the courts.
According to NYC Comptroller Brad Lander, “The city won’t meet its 2027 deadline for closing Rikers Island and building four new jails.” The four new jails are part of the city’s $8.7 billion plan (now over $13 billion) to close Rikers, launched in 2019 by former Mayor Bill de Blasio. “If you’re asking me, do I think we are on the timeline to close Rikers in 2027, I’ll have to tell you NO. We are not on the timeline to close Rikers in 2027, either in the trajectory of the number of people being held there, or in the speed with which the new facilities are being built.” Yet he still supports a plan, which is undoubtedly fiscally irresponsible.
According to Mayor Adams: “The law calls for the jails to be closed. We’re going to follow that law.” The city has to start exploring an alternative to the current plan. “We have to have a Plan B because those who created Plan A, that I inherited, obviously didn’t.” Despite being halfway through his term, Mayor Adams has not come up with a Plan B and is still following Plan A. This means that the next mayor will have to deal with the consequences, and the taxpayers will continue to bear the burden of billions of dollars wasted with no results.
We proposed a Plan B www.rikersreset.com that involves staying on Rikers and sharing it with LaGuardia Airport. Why not stay on Rikers and transform it into a beacon, showing the rest of the world what reducing recidivism, promoting rehabilitation, and ending generational incarceration can look like if done correctly? It is worth noting similar advancements were made on Roosevelt Island, then known as Blackwell Island, over 70 years ago. Turning the tarnished island and ruins of dilapidated jail facilities, mental asylums, and jailhouses into today’s Roosevelt Island. New York City is no stranger to these kinds of advancements.
We are New York City. If China could build skyscrapers in six months and the United Arab Emirates could build entire cities (Dubai) in the desert, why is it New York City (America) can’t build a 100-acre campus-style facility on Rikers, and lease the remaining 320 acres to expand LaGuardia Airport? Rebuilding and reimagining Rikers will do more to reduce recidivism and rehabilitate the incarcerated than four new borough-based jails could ever offer. By treating criminal justice and jail reform as an investment for social and economic development, New York City could turn Rikers into a beacon for the rest of the world. This would be an investment in “the communities” of one of the most powerful cities in the world.
Again, we are New York City!
By Elias Husamudeen contact@rikersreset.com
Elias Husamudeen is the founder of Eli-Global Reform Foundation. The Eli Foundation is a coalition of like-minded partners that support jail and prison reform at every stage of the process.