Four billion dollars and four years late: Queens jail is over budget and behind schedule
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Construction of the parking garage and community facility expected to be attached to the Queens borough-based jail in Kew Gardens. The city unveiled a $4 billion construction contract for jail this week that would run through 2031, four years after the 2027 deadline to close Rikers Island. Eagle file photo by Jacob Kaye
By Jacob Kaye
Queens’ borough-based jail set to be built in Kew Gardens will cost taxpayers at least $4 billion and could be completed four years after the city’s legally-mandated deadline to close Rikers Island, city records show.
According to a proposed contract between the city and Long Island-based construction company Leon D. Dematteis Construction Corp., the borough-based jail in Queens – one of four set to be built around the city – is potentially running at least four years behind schedule, and may not be completed until 2031.
The city’s Department of Citywide Administrative Services is set to have a public hearing on the proposed contract, which is scheduled to run for 2,692 consecutive calendar days, on Thursday, May 16. It’s likely to be finalized after the hearing.
The Queens jail and the jails also set for Brooklyn, the Bronx and Manhattan are supposed to serve as humane alternatives to the city’s current jail complex on Rikers Island, which city law requires to be shuttered by August 2027, and where over two dozen people have died since Mayor Eric Adams took office.
However, the proposed contract for the Queens jail – as well as a similar proposed contract for the Bronx jail also released this week – is only the latest indication that the city is barreling toward Rikers’ closure deadline without a plan to house the city’s detainees once that deadline comes.
Criminal justice advocates blasted Mayor Eric Adams’ administration for the proposed contracts released on Monday. Advocates have long accused the mayor of taking little to no action on the plan to close Rikers and the related borough-based jail program, both of which passed under his predecessor.
“This administration has consistently undermined its legal and moral obligation to close Rikers and complete construction of the borough-based jail system by the mandated deadline of 2027,” Darren Mack, the co-director of Freedom Agenda, said in a statement.
“In the meantime, thirty one people have died and countless others have experienced abuse, neglect, and violence at the Rikers Island penal colony on the Mayor’s watch,” Mack added. “He also keeps saying people with mental health needs shouldn’t be in jail, but keeps pursuing policies that are sending more of them to the living hell that is Rikers. He needs to get to work on providing people with the treatment they need and deserve, and get Rikers closed on time. The 2027 deadline is not an option, it’s a requirement.”
City Councilmember Sandy Nurse, who chairs the Council’s Committee on Criminal Justice, told the Eagle in a phone interview on Tuesday that the proposed contract is another piece of evidence that the Adams administration has “actively undermined pathways” to close Rikers on time.
“I think it's clear that the administration has zero plans to put any effort into closing Rikers,” Nurse said.
Since taking office, Adams has consistently cast doubt on Rikers’ closure plan, including the borough-based jail effort.
During his first year and a half in office, he hinted that his administration may attempt to re-do the closure plan, and in the fall of last year, Adams and the City Council announced that they had jointly reestablished the Independent Rikers Commission, which first crafted the plan to shutter the jail and open the four borough facilities.
The commission, which has met with a number of criminal justice stakeholders in New York City in recent months, is expected to issue its recommendations for Rikers’ closure before the end of the year.
Adams biggest criticism of the plan passed under Mayor Bill de Blasio was the jail system’s capacity.
Though the borough-based jails were originally designed to hold 3,300 detainees in total, Adams has said the city would be unable to get its jail population at or below that figure before Rikers’ closure.
In recent months, Adams said the borough-based jails would grow to have 4,400 beds in total.
In Queens, the World Borough’s facility was originally designed to have 125 beds for women and gender-expansive detainees – though the facility will house male detainees as well, it is the only facility that will house women and gender-expansive people. The jail is now expected to be built with the capacity to hold 450 women.
“Tripling the capacity of women’s beds at the Queens jail is an unmistakable sign of bad faith from this mayor toward women and gender-expansive people in our city’s jails,” said Rev. Sharon White-Harrigan, the executive director of the Women’s Community Justice Association.
In favor of the new beds, the Adams administration has proposed eliminating a number of beds meant to hold detainees with mental health issues, despite the fact that around half of all 6,300 detainees currently held on Rikers Island have been given a mental health diagnosis. Nurse told the Eagle that she believes the move “makes no sense.”
“We can’t afford to give up those beds,” the councilmember said.
While the mayor has blamed the population increase on the need for a new plan, advocates have accused the mayor of doing very little to even attempt to lower the jail’s population, which has grown by around 1,000 detainees on average since Adams took office at the start of 2022.
“There is a realistic plan for reducing the jail population to meet the target of fewer than 3,300 individuals incarcerated in city jails, and a critical component is prioritizing decarceration of people with mental health concerns and expanding supportive housing and community mental health supports,” said Jennifer J. Parish, the director of Criminal Justice Advocacy at Urban Justice Center Mental Health Project.
“Mayor Adams is failing in his responsibility to advance the plan to close Rikers,” she added. “Since taking office, he has proposed defunding [alternative to incarceration] and preventative programs – effective interventions for reducing incarceration, expanded the capacity of the borough-based jails by reducing space dedicated for specialized mental health units, and agreed to contracts that will result in people being incarcerated at Rikers Island long after the closure deadline.”
A mayoral spokesperson defended the contract, as well as the administration’s postponement of the borough-based jails’ construction.
“It has become painfully clear that the plan approved under the last administration leaves open serious questions about the city's ability to keep New Yorkers safe,” the spokesperson said.
“But as Mayor Adams has said repeatedly, this administration will always follow the law, and we remain committed to completing the borough-based jails, which is what we must do to protect public safety, provide humane conditions for those in custody, and close the jails on Rikers Island – there is simply no other path forward,” the spokesperson added.
With the proposed contracts for the Queens and Bronx facility currently under consideration, only the Manhattan facility has yet to have a construction firm attached to it.
Adams said last month during his executive budget presentation that he expects the entire project to cost the city nearly $16 billion, or twice the cost of the original projection.
