With 2027 out of reach, Council passes bills to move Rikers’ closure along

The City Council on Wednesday passed several bills, including one sponsored by Criminal Justice Committee Chair Sandy Nurse, that aim to move along the closure of Rikers Island’s jails, even as the legally-mandated 2027 closure deadline is out of reach. Photo by Emil Cohen/NYC Council Media Unit

By Jacob Kaye

With the city lagging years behind its legally-mandated 2027 deadline to shutter Rikers Island, the City Council on Wednesday passed a suite of bills that they say will at least help get the effort to close the notorious jail complex back on track.

Though the possibility of hitting the August 2027 deadline to demolish Rikers and replace it with four borough-based jails is largely out of reach, the trio of bills passed Wednesday will help move the city’s closure plan forward, the legislation’s supporters say.

One bill, sponsored by Criminal Justice Committee Chair Sandy Nurse, would require the city to appoint someone to serve as the coordinator for Rikers Island’s closure, a job solely dedicated to the closure of the jails and the transition to the $16 billion borough-based jail system. The bill passed 39 to seven.

Another bill, introduced by Queens and Brooklyn Councilmember Jennifer Gutiérrez, would require the Department of Correction to ensure incarcerated New Yorkers have an electronic tablet to securely receive and look over evidence in their case. The bill passed unanimously.

And a third bill, sponsored by Brooklyn Councilmember Rita Joseph, would require the city to assess whether a person in custody is fit for an alternative to incarceration program. The bill passed 39 to seven as well.

The bills’ passage comes as the city has a little less than two years to solve the riddle of Rikers’ closure. Though the incarcerated population dipped for the first time in months in August, it remains a little less than twice as large as what can one day be held in the borough-based jails.

And then there’s the new jails. Brooklyn’s jail will likely be the first to open but it won’t be ready until at least 2029, two years after Rikers is supposed to close. The final jails, including the one being built in Kew Gardens, likely won't be completed until 2031.

All the while, violence in the jails continues. Two correctional officers were sent to the hospital last month after a notorious detainee slashed them both with a ceramic blade. Fights between detainees, staff assaults on detainees and slashings remain high on Rikers.

The DOC has also seen a rash of deaths on the island. A dozen people have died in DOC custody or shortly after being released from it this year, the largest death toll since 2022, when 19 people died.

“We need to start preparing [for Rikers’ closure],” Nurse told the Eagle ahead of the vote on Wednesday. “Whether the [borough-based] jails become operational in 2029 or 2030, we still have a humanitarian crisis on Rikers right now.”

Each of the bills were borne out of a report issued by the Independent Rikers Commission in March.

The commission, which crafted the original plan to close Rikers and was re-formed by the Council and the mayor in late 2023 to address the city’s failure to adhere to it, ultimately found in its report that the 2027 deadline to shutter the deadly jail complex had become impossible for the city to meet.

Construction delays caused by the pandemic and a general lack of will from city leadership to move the closure along had put the city so far behind the eight ball that it had to take drastic and immediate action to get the plan somewhat back on track, the commission said.

The commission made a slew of recommendations as part of its report, several of which made it into the Council’s legislation on Wednesday.

"Rikers hurts crime victims, public safety, and everyone working and incarcerated there,” Jonathan Lippman, the former chief judge of New York’s courts who now leads the commission, said in a statement. “Closing it – as required by law – demands true leadership like that demonstrated by the City Council. The bills passed today, rooted in the Independent Rikers Commission’s Blueprint to Close Rikers will lock in the next mayor’s full attention on closing Rikers, get more people with serious mental illness and addiction the treatment they need, and help stop criminal cases from dragging on.”

“Just good, smart, common-sense," he added.

Nurse’s bill, which would create an Office of Coordinator for Rikers Island’s Closure, aims to address what lawmakers say has been a lack of coordination of the closure plan during Mayor Eric Adams’ tenure. Adams, who is largely opposed to the jails’ closure, has shifted who in his administration has taken the lead on the plan multiple times, according to Nurse. The frequent changes have stifled the city’s ability to gain any momentum toward meeting the deadline, officials said.

“We've seen very little leadership coming from City Hall,” Nurse said.

Nurse’s bill would also force the creation of an interagency working group that would meet no less than every two months and produce a progress report on Rikers’ closure every quarter. The group will be made up of representatives from the Department of Correction, Correctional Health Services, the NYPD, the Department of Education, the Department of Probation, the Department of Environmental Protection, the sheriff’s office and the City Council, among others.

The city’s plan to close Rikers Island is years behind schedule. Eagle file photo by Jacob Kaye

“We're going to be at the table, able to ask the questions, able to be in the conversation to understand what the hell is actually going on,” Nurse said.

The mayor’s office didn’t say one way or another if the mayor would sign Nurse’s bill into law when asked by the Eagle on Wednesday. Instead, a mayoral spokesperson criticized the legislation, claiming it would only create additional bureaucracy and slow down an already delayed closure.

The Council said that Gutiérrez’s bill, which would force the DOC to provide the tech incarcerated people need to see the evidence being brought against them, will address another issue raised by the commission – court delays.

“While we are still reviewing the bills, Mayor Adams supports the right of every incarcerated person to have the resources they need to ensure due process before the law,” a City Hall spokesperson said. “Mayor Adams supports the right of every incarcerated person to the resources they need to ensure due process before the law,” in response to the tech bill.

And Joseph’s bill to force the city to conduct alternative to incarceration assessments aims to divert people from jail into social services programming, reducing the population on Rikers, which has ballooned to over 7,300 in the years since Adams first took office.

The mayor’s office declined to comment on Joseph’s bill.

Zachary Katznelson, the executive director of the Independent Rikers Commission, told the Eagle on Wednesday that while the 2027 closure deadline remains out of reach, he’s seen the Council begin to take some positive steps toward advancing the end of Rikers’ jails.

The most recent city budget agreed upon by the mayor and Council included new money for mental health, reentry and supervised release programs.

But even with the new funding and legislation, a 2027 closure remains an unlikely goal.

“I think the mission now, as exemplified by the recent deaths at Rikers, the continual stories of violence there and failing systems, really just add urgency to the need to get as much done as we absolutely can, as quickly as we can to make the jail safer for staff and for incarcerated people,” Katznelson said. “That’s really our mission right now.”