City set to shutter two jails to make way for new facilities
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A jail on Rikers Island and a Brooklyn jail in Boerum Hill will close early next year as the city prepares to build four new borough-based jails. AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File.
By Victoria Merlino
Two of New York City’s 11 municipal jails will close in early 2020 as the city prepares to build four new borough-based detention facilities, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced last Thursday.
The Brooklyn Detention Complex in Boerum Hill will close in January 2020 and the Eric M. Taylor Center on Rikers Island will close in March 2020, as the city’s jail population falls below 7,000 people and will likely decrease further. The city estimates that the population will decrease to 3,300 by 2026.
“With the lowest rate of incarceration of any major city and crime at historic lows, New York is again debunking the notion that you must arrest your way to safety,” de Blasio said in a statement. “These two closures show that we are making good on our promise to close Rikers Island and create a correctional system that is fundamentally smaller, safer and fairer.”
The borough-based jails plan, approved by the City Council in October, will build modern jail facilities in each borough except Staten Island. The City Council voted in favor of the plan after months of contentious arguments from local residents over the scope and execution of the plan. A related land use measure will formally ban the infamous and outdated jails on Rikers Island
The Brooklyn jail currently houses 400 people, and has capacity for 759. The EMTC on Rikers holds 850 people, with a full capacity for 1,719. The closure will not result in any layoffs, according to a statement from the Mayor’s Office, and staff will be moved to other facilities.
De Blasio attributed the decrease in the city’s jail population to a continued reduction in crime and programs like supervised release, a decarceration initiative that matches pretrial defendants with case managers and social workers who help ensure the defendant accesses necessary services and attends court dates.
Queens Councilmember Donovan Richards, chair of the Committee on Public Safety, praised the timeline for closing the two jails.
“Since the City Council voted to close Rikers and implement a borough-based jail system, we knew this was only the beginning of the work needed to accomplish this historic plan to drastically change decades of mass incarceration,” Richards said in a statement.
“It is very encouraging to see the de Blasio administration moving quickly on the first steps towards achieving this goal by shutting down the first two facilities where detainees suffer some of the worst conditions,” he continued.
Queens will soon see a new jail rise in Kew Gardens behind the Queens Criminal Courthouse.
Starting early next year, the city will begin evaluating proposals for demolition of the existing Queens Detention Center and for construction of the new Kew Gardens complex and an accompanying parking garage.
