Adams administration continues to miss Rikers closure deadlines
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The Adams administration has yet to transfer an unused parcel of land or facility on Rikers Island, as required by the Renewable Rikers Act. All transfers occurred under the de Blasio administration. Graphic courtesy of Freedom Agenda
By Jacob Kaye
In the final year of former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration, the city’s Department of Correction transferred ownership of a vacant parcel of land and one of its nearly one dozen jail facilities to the city’s Department of Citywide Administrative Services.
The transfers, which took place in July and December of 2021, are baked into the city’s plan to close Rikers Island as a jail complex – and to reopen it as a renewable energy hub – in four years.
Though the transfers are supposed to occur every six months until 2027, the first two completed by the city have also been the last.
Earlier this summer, Mayor Eric Adams and the Department of Correction missed their third consecutive deadline to transfer over an unused piece of land or jail facility to DCAS. In fact, no transfers have occurred since Adams first took office in January 2022.
Though the mayor and Department of Correction Commissioner Louis Molina have said that Rikers’ ballooning population has made it so there are no vacant areas to transfer, officials who have toured the jail complex have suggested unused land exists on the secluded island in the East River.
Others have accused the Adams administration of purposefully missing the deadlines in an effort to buck the plan to close Rikers, one that Adams has criticized and often called into question.
When asked about the missed June deadline, a spokesperson for the Department of Correction said that “all facilities are currently being used for housing individuals in custody or for other critical Departmental operations.”
“The empty land on Rikers has already been transferred to DCAS,” the spokesperson added, referring to the 43 acres of unused land on Rikers Island transferred to the agency during the final week of the de Blasio administration.
DCAS declined to comment on the status of the transfers and directed the Eagle to the DOC for comment.
City Hall also directed the Eagle to the DOC when asked for comment. The mayor’s office did not respond to further questions about what efforts the mayor has made to meet the deadlines signed into law by his predecessor a year before he took office.
What is and isn’t vacant
The transfers of empty land or unused facilities are outlined in the city’s Renewable Rikers Act, a package of bills that was signed into law by de Blasio in 2021.
The legislation, which was sponsored by former Queens City Councilmember Costa Constantinides, includes a law that requires the city to determine the feasibility of building renewable energy projects on the island, a law that requires the city to assess the island’s capacity for organics and wastewater processing and a final law that establishes a process for transferring control of Rikers Island from the DOC to DCAS in an effort to speed up the transformation of the island.
But there’s a legal way around the twice-annual transfers. The law requires that “the mayor shal transfer charge over every portion of Rikers Island that the mayor determines is not in active use for the housing of incarcerated persons, or in active use for the providing of direct services to such persons.”
Constantinides told the Eagle in 2022 that the language of law gives the city “leeway” to delay the transfers by claiming no part of the jail complex is vacant.
“That being said, that dissipates by 2027 and they are going to need to accelerate land transfers toward the back end, or as things move along much more quickly later on when this becomes closer to needing to be completely off the island by 2027,” the former lawmaker said.
“This deadline is important,” he added.
But what is and isn’t vacant isn’t entirely clear.
In June of 2022, Molina announced that the agency would be closing down the Otis Bantum Correctional Center, a 1,700-bed facility, amid a staffing crisis. But the DOC has held onto the facility, citing a potential future need to use it to house detainees as the population on Rikers continues to grow.
“We are not in the position to transfer OBCC to DCAS,” Molina said during a press conference at the time. “It would not be logical for us to have a facility transferred or to DCAS when there's a possibility in the future we may need that.”
Though the Department of Correction says there aren’t any parcels of unused land or empty facilities on Rikers Island available for transfer to the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, multiple lawmakers say there are. File photo by Seth Wenig
In May of this year, the Daily News reported that the city was considering housing migrants inside OBCC as it struggled – and continues to struggle – to find housing for the over 100,000 asylum seekers who arrived to the five boroughs dating back to last spring. The plan to house migrants inside the building in the jail complex – where over two dozen people have died since Adams took office – has yet to move forward.
The DOC currently lists OBCC as one of its “active Rikers Island facilities” on its website.
Also listed as an active facility is the Anna M. Kross Center, which has primarily been used to detain those with mental illness or other health complications. However, federal monitor Steve J. Martin said in a July report that the DOC was planning to close AMKC in August – Martin said those housed in AMKC were expected to be moved to OBCC.
Sarita Daftary, the co-executive director of Freedom Agenda, told the Eagle on Friday that the DOC had recently confirmed to her organization that the facility had been closed.
“They have the opportunity and obligation to catch up by transferring AMKC now,” Daftary said. “That place is a hellhole.”
Beyond the unused facilities, several lawmakers have claimed that there is currently unused land available for transfer to DCAS.
Earlier this summer, a small group of city councilmembers, including Queens Councilmember Jim Gennaro and Brooklyn Councilmember Sandy Nurse, took a trip to Rikers Island in an effort to assess what was and wasn’t available for transfer.
Nurse told the Eagle on Friday that the agency confirmed to her and her colleagues during the trip that there were parcels of land on the island that were not in use by DOC.
Local lawmakers say they have seen examples of vacant land available for transfer on Rikers Island. Photo via Councilmember Sandy Nurse/Twitter
Shortly after the visit, Nurse and Gennaro together wrote a letter to the Adams administration asking about their plan to meet the various milestones featured in the law to close Rikers. They have yet to get a response.
“The law is the law, and the Adams administration really only has two proper legal options before it – which would be to comply with the law, which they're compelled to do, or challenge the law,” Gennaro told the Eagle on Friday. “They've done neither.”
City Councilmember Robert Holden said earlier this month that he too saw empty facilities and unused land during a recent visit alongside members of the council’s “Common Sense Caucus.”
“It’s a huge island with empty buildings,” Holden said, adding that he believes the space and facilities should be modernized and that Rikers Island should remain open as a jail complex.
Going ‘rogue’
When Adams first came into office, there were around 5,300 people being held in the city’s jail. Rikers’ average daily population has increased nearly every month since then and currently sits around 6,000 detainees – that’s nearly twice as large as what the city’s upcoming four borough-based jails will be able to accommodate.
Adams has on numerous occasions pointed to Rikers’ rising population – which, according to Molina, is expected to reach 7,000 detainees by 2024 – not only as a barrier to completing the transfers but also as an impediment to closing Rikers and replacing it with the borough-based jail facilities.
“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,” the mayor said last August. “If we don't drop down the prison [sic] population the way they thought we would, what do we do – no one answered that question.”
But critics of the mayor and the DOC say that it’s not the jail’s population obstructing the path to the jail’s closure, it’s a lack of support for the plan from the agency and Adams.
“The administration has not prioritized taking steps to close Rikers,” Nurse said. “There are parcels that are low hanging fruit to transfer to DCAS, but the fact that they are dragging their feet on this shows there is no commitment to closing [Rikers].”
Mayor Eric Adams has called into question the city’s ability to close Rikers Island as a jail complex by 2027. File photo by Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office
City Councilmember Tiffany Cabán, whose district in the council includes Rikers Island, agreed.
“The Department of Correction is a rogue agency whose leaders relentlessly violate the law, undermine oversight bodies, and do everything in their power to continue operating with impunity and avoiding accountability,” Cabán told the Eagle in a statement on Friday.
“Rikers Island is a hellhole, simple and plain,” added the lawmaker. “To achieve true public safety, we need to swiftly close it and invest in jobs, housing, and mental health in the communities most impacted by its horrors.”
Just as deadlines toward closing Rikers have been missed, so have deadlines for opening the city’s borough-based jails.
In March, the Department of Design and Construction proposed a contract between the city and a construction firm for the building of Brooklyn’s borough-based jail, the first jail the city plans to complete. The details of the contract specified that it would run through 2029, two years after Rikers is required to close.
More recently, the city said that it was amending the Brooklyn jail project and increasing the number of detainees it will house by around 150. In order to make space for the additional beds, the Adams administration proposed eliminating space in the jail’s “therapeutic” areas, or areas designated for detainees with mental illnesses or substance abuse issues.
No other contracts for the city’s three other future jails have been proposed, calling into question the city’s ability to build any new jail before the summer of 2027.
Daftary, of Freedom Agenda, said that by ignoring the Renewable Rikers Act, failing to execute the transfers and generally being uncooperative with the plan to close Rikers, the mayor is being inconsistent in his messaging to New Yorkers.
“The mayor has said he will follow the law, and the mayor has also said that his administration is focused on getting stuff done,” Daftary said. “Then get this done.”
