Mayor suggests Rikers should stay open

Mayor Eric Adams said Tuesday that he believes Rikers Island can be fixed and remain open, in defiance of the city’s plan to shutter the dangerous jail complex. Photo by Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office

By Jacob Kaye

Mayor Eric Adams continued to stray from the city’s current plan to shutter Rikers Island on Tuesday, suggesting that he believes the troubled jail complex could remain open and be repaired, rather than shuttered.

Adams, who reportedly has begun exploring the possibility of turning one or several of the planned borough-based jails into housing, appeared to fully reject the city’s longstanding plan to close Rikers during his weekly “off-topic” press conference.

While Adams has never been all in on the effort to close Rikers and replace it with four borough-based jails, his remarks this week appear to mark the first time he’s proposed the jail complex where over 100 people have died in the past decade should remain open.

“I believe you can [fix Rikers and keep people there],” Adams said.

The mayor’s comments came a few days after the Daily News reported that top officials in his administration had begun probing the possibility of converting the yet-to-built borough-based jail facilities in Queens, Brooklyn, Manhattan and the Bronx into housing. Such an effort would be a repudiation of not only the city’s laws surrounding Rikers’ closure, but also the work of the Independent Rikers Commission, which, after over a year of work, released an updated blueprint for the city to follow to close Rikers in March.

At the time of the release of the commission’s report, Adams pointed to the findings as validation of his hesitancy to follow the closure plan established under his predecessor, former Mayor Bill de Blasio.

The commission found that under Adams, the effort to close Rikers and open the new jails had been stalled to the point that the city couldn’t realistically shutter the jail complex by August 2027, as mandated by law.

But rather than change the deadline through legislation, the commission recommended leaving the legal deadline in place until the City Council and mayor craft an actionable plan to close the dangerous jails as soon as possible.

Adams rejected the recommendation on Tuesday.

“The bill [to close Rikers Island] was flawed from the beginning,” the mayor said. “Right now, the City Council must reexamine that.”

The mayor also appeared to ignore the commission’s recommendations about how to provide health care for the over 50 percent of detainees diagnosed with a mental illness.

The commission, which was re-formed by City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams with the blessing of the mayor in October 2023, recommended the city make a number of investments into mental health treatments and programs.

It also called on the city to build around 360 secure hospital beds for detainees in three city hospitals. The beds in Bellevue Hospital, Woodhull and North-Central Bronx were proposed by the commission in their first blueprint, but the projects have fallen years behind.

Construction of the first 100 beds at Bellevue was recently completed, two years later than expected. However, the unit has yet to open.

Both Woodhull and North-Central Bronx Hospitals are not expected to open their beds until 2028. Just this week, the city began to take steps towards building the new unit at North-Central Bronx, Crain’s New York Business reported. The beds were originally planned to come online this year.

The commission also recommended opening 500 psychiatric beds in state-run facilities in an effort to lessen the population in the city’s jails and provide detainees with treatment.

But Adams has different ideas about where the city should treat its mentally ill detainees.

Despite frequently complaining the four borough-based jails won’t have enough combined space to the approximately 7,000 detainees currently being held on Rikers, Adams said Tuesday that he believes the Brooklyn borough-based jail should be turned into a mental health facility.

Though Adams has previously floated the idea of converting one of the jails into a treatment center, Tuesday marked the first time he provided any details about where he believes it should be built.

“I think Brooklyn house would be an excellent place to do it,” Adams said. “Build a state-of-the-art facility that can be preventive and make sure people get the care that they deserve,” the mayor said.

Zachary Katznelson, the executive director of the Independent Rikers Commission, appeared to urge Adams to stick to the group’s blueprint on Tuesday in the wake of the mayor’s comments.

“The law demands Rikers close for good reason: it’s an unfixable disaster for public safety, morality, and finances,” Katznelson said in a statement to the Eagle. “The Independent Rikers Commission examined all reasonable options as part of our Blueprint to Close Rikers and recommended 500 new forensic psychiatric beds in a separate facility — in addition to the four safer, modern jails near the courthouses, not instead of one.”

“That’s how we can best support crime victims, incarcerated people, and correctional staff,” he added.

A spokesperson for the City Council declined to respond on the mayor’s comments on Tuesday and referred the Eagle to an April statement from City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams issued after the Council released a policy brief informed by the commission’s report outlining the most immediate steps that the city should take to close Rikers Island and successfully transition to a borough-based jail system.

“The path to closing Rikers and ending the humanitarian crisis it has fostered requires leadership, urgency, and action by the mayor’s office, the Council, and all stakeholders in the justice system,” the speaker said. “During this administration, the Council has lacked a committed and willing partner in City Hall to take the necessary actions to close Rikers and improve safety in our city’s jails to make the people detained, staff, and all New Yorkers safer.”