City appoints first ‘close Rikers czar’ to oversee delayed jail shutdown
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Dana Kaplan, a former member of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration and an advisor to the Independent Rikers Commission, was named the city’s first “close Rikers czar.” AP photo by Seth Wenig
By Jacob Kaye
The city has appointed its first-ever “close Rikers czar,” tasking a longtime criminal justice reformer with getting its long-delayed plan to shutter the troubled jail complex back on track.
Dana Kaplan, who helped craft the current plan to shutter the jails on Rikers as a senior advisor to the Independent Rikers Commission, was tapped by Mayor Zohran Mamdani to serve in the recently-created role. Kaplan’s appointment was first reported by THE CITY.
She’ll be tasked with overseeing and coordinating the city’s effort to follow through on the plan, which originally was supposed to result in the closure of Rikers Island in 2027.
But construction delays brought on by the pandemic and a mayoral administration that was dubious of the plan to replace Rikers with four borough-based jails set the city’s timeline back, and made meeting the legally mandated deadline an impossibility.
Mamdani has vowed to reverse course from former Mayor Eric Adams, who was criticized for slow-walking the closure plan. Kaplan will be asked to manage that effort.
It won’t be easy. All four of the borough-based jails, which together are expected to cost the city nearly $16 billion, won’t be open until 2032. There’s also a question of the jails’ population, which is currently 2,300 people too large to fit into the borough facilities.
The 2027 closure deadline also remains on the city’s books, though city officials have indicated that they’ve begun discussing ways to amend the law.
As the city kickstarts its Rikers closure efforts, it will do so under the partial authority of a court-appointed remediation manager, who recently took over significant responsibility of the day-to-day operations of the Department of Correction. The remediation manager, Nicholas Deml, was appointed to the position by a federal judge who ruled that the city had failed over the past decade to correct persistently violent conditions on Rikers Island.
Regardless of the path toward the jails’ closure, Kaplan will be responsible for its implementation.
“Dana Kaplan has the vision and expertise to help us close Rikers Island, reduce the jail population and open a borough-based jail system that is smaller, safer and more humane,” Mamdani said in a statement. “She will lead coordination across agencies to deliver a system that respects the dignity of people in custody and the people who work in these facilities.”
Kaplan said she was “honored to take on this role and work alongside city agencies, the City Council, federal partners and service providers to safely reduce the jail population, improve conditions and finish the job of transitioning to borough-based facilities.”
“Closing Rikers Island requires coordination, urgency and a commitment not only to closing the facilities, but to building a system rooted in dignity, accountability and care — turning a chapter in our city’s jail system and opening a new one by replacing Rikers with a smaller, safer and more humane system that better serves all New Yorkers,” she added.
A longtime criminal justice reformer, Kaplan was a member of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Office of Criminal Justice, where she served as the deputy director of the Close Rikers and Justice Initiatives until 2022. Under de Blasio, Kaplan helped the city implement the Raise the Age law, moving teenagers off of Rikers Island and into juvenile facilities.
Most recently, she worked as the director of the social impact campaign for the film “The Alabama Solution,” a documentary about abuses inside Alabama’s prisons.
Kaplan will be the first to serve as the close Rikers czar after the City Council created the position last year.
The coordinator position was first recommended by the Independent Rikers Commission, which Kaplan advised.
During the Adams administration, lawmakers and advocates complained that there wasn’t an individual tasked solely with overseeing the effort to close Rikers Island.
“To date, responsibility for closing Rikers has been diffuse and numerous senior officials have taken turns as the ‘point person,’” the Independent Rikers Commission wrote in its March 2025 report. “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.”
Kaplan’s appointment is the latest step Mamdani has taken to kick the Rikers closure effort into gear.
Earlier this month, the city opened a 104-bed hospital unit at Bellevue Hospital to house detainees with serious physical illnesses. Construction of the unit had been completed at the start of 2025, but sat vacant as Adams’ DOC said it was having difficulty figuring out how to staff it.
During the announcement, Mamdani said the city would also begin moving forward with building outposted therapeutic units at Woodhull and North Central Bronx Hospitals, which were supposed to open in 2024 and 2025, respectively.
The city also celebrated last week the completion of the structure of Brooklyn’s borough-based jail, which will eventually be the first in the city to open.
Advocates with the Close Rikers Campaign called Kaplan’s appointment on Tuesday “another critical step forward in the effort to shutter the jails on Rikers for good.”
“In this moment, the urgency of appointing the Close Rikers Czar cannot be overstated,” the campaign said in a statement. “It is essential to have a person at City Hall who will bring the whole-of-government approach to closing Rikers. We look forward to working with Ms. Kaplan to ensure that the City is using every tool at its disposal to deliver on the legal and moral mandate to transition off Rikers, and into smaller borough-based jails on the fastest possible timeline.”
