City cannot shut Rikers by 2027, landmark report finds

A long-anticipated report from the Independent Rikers Commission found that the city will be unable to meet the 2027 deadline to close Rikers Island. AP file photo by Bebeto Matthews

By Jacob Kaye

In a stark admission on Wednesday, the commission formed to map out the closure of Rikers Island said that the current 2027 deadline to shutter the deadly jail complex has become impossible for the city to meet.

While the legally-mandated August 2027 deadline for Rikers’ closure has seemed more and more far-fetched each year since the law’s passage in 2019, the statement from the Independent Rikers Commission in a report issued Wednesday appears to be the most blunt assessment of the city’s failure to hit the deadline yet.

But despite the hopelessness of hitting the original closure deadline, the commission said in no uncertain terms that the city’s efforts to close Rikers shouldn’t cease.

“For the sake of public safety, basic morality, and fiscal responsibility, Rikers must close as soon as possible,” the report read. “Anything less is unacceptable. That was true when our commission issued our first call to close Rikers in 2017. It is even more true today.”

The report, which includes a new “blueprint” mapping out the path the city could take to close Rikers, comes nearly a year and a half after City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams ordered the group to re-form and craft a new plan to shut the jail complex. The reformation of the commission also comes after its original plan didn’t get much traction under Mayor Eric Adams.

While the original plan mapped out ways to lower Rikers’ population ahead of the closure deadline, the population under the mayor has risen by around 1,400 detainees over the past three years. The original plan also included measures to reduce the number of people with mental illness being held on Rikers. Instead, the number of people with diagnosed mental illnesses languishing on Rikers has continued to increase. Perhaps most crucially, the plan to replace Rikers with borough-based jails has been so significantly delayed that all four jails are not expected to open until five years after the 2027 closure deadline.

“It is unfortunately the case that despite the urgency to close Rikers in 2027, it is not a realistic deadline for closure right now,” Zachary Katznelson, the executive director of the Independent Rikers Commission, told the Eagle on Wednesday.

While the commission’s report did not blame any one official, it said that a “sense of urgency” had been missing from the city’s effort to close Rikers.

The recognition of the city’s failure to stay on top of the fast-approaching deadline is not entirely new.

Mayor Adams has for years questioned the plan created under his predecessor. While blaming construction delays on the side effects of the pandemic, and the growing population on Rikers on clogged up courts and rising crime rates, the mayor has rarely acknowledged the likely contribution his own policies have had on the bound-to-be missed deadline.

Social services on Rikers Island designed to address recidivism saw major cuts under the mayor – the administration recently committed to restoring a majority of the cuts, two years after initiating them. The city has also seen an increase in arrests since the mayor took office. The effort to build additional beds for detainees with mental illnesses, as suggested by the original commission, also significantly slowed under the mayor.

Additionally, the jails haven’t appeared to get any safer since the mayor entered City Hall. Earlier this week, a detainee died of an alleged medical emergency after spending a week at Rikers. The detainee, 20-year-old Ariel Quidone, became the 35th person to die in Department of Correction custody – or shortly after being released from it – under Mayor Adams.

Advocates with the Katal Center Equity, Health, and Justice on Wednesday said the commission’s report didn’t go far enough to “name the most significant obstacle to closing Rikers: Mayor Eric Adams.”

“Instead of working to address the crisis and shut down Rikers, since his first days in office, Mayor Adams has taken a jail-first approach to public safety and worked to increase the jail population while expressing opposition to the closure plan,” Katal Center co-directors Melanie Dominguez and Yonah Zeitz said.

The city, under Mayor Eric Adams, hasn’t had much urgency when it comes to its efforts to shutter Rikers Island, according to a new report from the Independent Rikers Commission. Photo by Benny Polatseck/Mayoral Photography Office

The mayor on Wednesday did not commit to following the numerous recommendations laid out by the commission in its new report, but in a statement said that he was “glad that the Lippman Commission is finally recognizing what we have been sounding the alarm on for years — the plan for Rikers was flawed and did not offer a realistic timeline.”

"Public safety and justice are the prerequisites to prosperity, which is why, since day one, our administration has made keeping New Yorkers safe our North Star,” the mayor said. “With historic drops in overall crime citywide, our work speaks for itself. While we have always supported the closure of Rikers, we have been clear that we can’t be so idealistic that we’re not realistic about the true impacts a 2027 closure could have on our city’s public safety.”

In his statement, the mayor also touted investments his administration has made in building the borough-based jails, which are expected to cost nearly $16 billion, and for providing mental health care for detainees.

Mayor Adams also called on the City Council to change the law mandating Rikers closure, which he claimed has prohibited the city from making capital investments into the current crumbling facilities in the de facto penal colony.

“It is critical that the city is able to unlock additional emergency capital funds — which the law passed by the City Council and the previous administration currently prohibits us from doing — to ensure that we can continue to provide adequate services to both staff and people in our charge,” the mayor said. “To leave the plan as is and deny us these funds hurts our staff and is inhumane to those in our custody.”

However, the mayor’s wishes directly conflict with the commission’s recommendations in its new report. The commission, which is led by former Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman and is sometimes referred to as the Lippman Commission, said that the law mandating Rikers closure should remain in place “until an agreement can be reached between the City Council and the administration on a path forward that assures progress toward closing Rikers on all necessary fronts.”

Speaker Adams, who recently launched a campaign for mayor, said in a statement on Wednesday that she was recommitting the Council to shutting the jail complex and called on the mayor to do the same.

“While success requires partnership and close collaboration from many stakeholders, our city’s mayoral administration must be willing to take concrete action steps and dedicate resources required to implement this blueprint, so another viable plan does not go unfulfilled,” the mayoral challenger said in a statement. “There is no shortcut to the work ahead, and there can be no discussions about the legal closure date without these types of commitments from the administration.”

Rikers Island will likely remain open as a jail complex beyond 2027, despite city law ordering its closure by the fast-approaching and now out-of-reach deadline. AP file photo by Julia Nikhinson

Big picture remains the same

While much of the blueprint to close Rikers mirrors the original proposal, there are several new elements to the updated plan.

Among them is a recommendation to create two new senior-level positions – one at City Hall and the other within the Department of Correction – charged with overseeing and coordinating Rikers’ closure.

According to the commission, the plan to close Rikers has thus far been led by “numerous senior officials [who] have taken turns as the ‘point person.’”

“The effort would benefit from having one strong leader who can oversee the various strands of the effort full-time, without being pulled away to deal with other aspects of their remit,” the report read.

Additionally, the commission recommended on Wednesday creating 500 additional beds outside of the jails for detainees in need of serious psychiatric treatment. With the additional beds, the total number of beds in the borough-based jail system would be brought up to 4,500 – the original plan called for 3,300 beds.

“These 500 beds are about really trying to think about, how do we actually meet the needs of the people that are [on Rikers] in a secure, safe way that's cost effective, and that really puts our city on a better path,” Katznelson said.

The new report also highlighted a recently piloted plan from the Unified Court System to speed up cases in which a defendant is being held pre-trial on Rikers. The series of “case management innovations” was first introduced by court officials in October and a scaled-back version of the plan was piloted in Brooklyn Criminal Court in November. The Eagle reported earlier this week that the plan has proven to be successful in its early goings.

The commission said in its report that the efforts from the court could result in reducing the population in the city’s jails by 2,000 detainees.

“The Unified Court system understands that efficient case processing will play a key role in the City's efforts to close the jails on Rikers Island,” Chief Administrative Judge Joseph Zayas said in a statement to the Eagle on Wednesday.

“We are gratified that the Independent Rikers Commission has recognized our firm commitment to implementing sustainable solutions to address the most significant sources of delay in the disposition of serious criminal cases, which includes ensuring that our courts in New York City have the resources they need to fairly and efficiently adjudicate cases,” he added. “We are looking forward to continuing to work with all of our partners in the criminal justice system to ensure that these new procedures are implemented effectively, and with all deliberate speed.”

The Department of Correction has also improved its efforts to get detainees to court on time, cutting back on unnecessary delays. In 2023, around 94.2 percent of detainees were taken to their scheduled court appearances. That number increased to 98.3 percent in 2024, according to the DOC.

But the heart of the report remains the same over half a decade after its first iteration was issued, Katznelson said.

“This big picture idea that we need to close Rikers has not changed,” Katznelson said. “It's only gotten more urgent.”