Council working on bill to push back Rikers closure deadline
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The City Council is currently working on a bill to extend the deadline to close Rikers Island. AP file photo by Seth Wenig
By Jacob Kaye and Noah Powelson
The city has yet to propose a new deadline to close Rikers Island’s dangerous jail complex, despite admitting that hitting the current legally mandated August 2027 deadline is all but impossible.
But a solution may soon be on the table.
The City Council is currently drafting a bill to extend the deadline to close Rikers and replace it with four borough-based jails, all of which are under construction but not expected to be completed until 2032, according to several lawmakers.
The Eagle’s reporting on the bill is the first public confirmation that a new deadline for Rikers’ closure is officially in the works, though city officials have long acknowledged that the 2027 deadline is not achievable.
“The deadline for 2027 is, at this point, not going to happen,” City Councilmember Selvena Brooks-Powers, who chairs the Council’s Committee on Criminal Justice, told the Eagle. “We all have recognized we’ll have to push back the deadline.”
The Council’s legislation will override the current Rikers closure law, which was passed in 2019 and mandates that the jail complex be shuttered on Aug. 31, 2027, a year from Monday.
The effort to close Rikers, where over 100 people have died in the past decade, fell significantly behind under Mayor Eric Adams, who largely rejected the plan crafted by his predecessor, former Mayor Bill de Blasio. Construction delays caused by the pandemic also pushed back the timeline for the completion of the four borough-based jails designed to replace the jail complex on Rikers.
None of the jails, which together will cost around $16 billion, are expected to be completed before the 2027 deadline. Brooklyn’s jail is on track to be completed in 2029, while the Queens and Bronx facilities are scheduled to be finished in 2031. Manhattan’s jail is not expected to open until 2032.
The Council’s new bill will likely be sponsored by City Councilmember Sandy Nurse, the former chair of the Committee on Criminal Justice, and is expected to be introduced before the end of the year, according to the lawmakers.
But the bill’s specifics are still under negotiation.
The new legislation could establish a new deadline for Rikers’ closure or set incremental deadlines that could be extended if the city meets specified benchmarks, according to the lawmakers.
“I don’t want to throw out an arbitrary deadline,” Brooks-Powers said, adding that “conversations are happening with advocates and stakeholders to determine what timeline makes the most sense.”
City Council Speaker Julie Menin’s office did not respond to the Eagle’s request for comment.
City Councilmember Selvena Brooks-Powers says a bill to extend the current 2027 deadline to close Rikers Island is in the works. File photo by Gerardo Romo / NYC Council Media Unit
Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Department of Correction Commissioner Stanley Richards, and the mayor’s “close Rikers czar,” Dana Kaplan, will likely also have a say in the bill’s specifics.
“We look forward to reviewing potential legislation,” Sam Raskin, a spokesperson for the mayor, said in a statement to the Eagle. “The Mamdani administration is committed to continuing to work in partnership with the City Council toward our shared goal of closing Rikers Island.”
Mamdani has earned praise from advocates and councilmembers for taking a series of actions long recommended by the Independent Rikers Commission, which crafted the original blueprint toward closing Rikers.
In June, the DOC transferred the vacant North Infirmary Command facility and parts of the George Motchan Detention Center and Anna M. Kross Center on Rikers to the Department of Citywide Administrative Services to facilitate the transition to turning Rikers Island into a renewable energy hub. The transfers were part of the original plan to close Rikers but went completely ignored during Adams’ four years in office.
The mayor also opened a first-of-its-kind outposted therapeutic housing unit at Bellevue Hospital, where detainees with serious physical illnesses are treated.
But the administration also missed a May deadline to produce and publicly release two reports outlining its plan to close Rikers. It has yet to release the reports or generally acknowledge its pathway toward closing the jails.
“I feel really optimistic about the way the [Mamdani] administration is approaching this, but we need to see a clear plan,” Nurse said.
City Councilmember Sandy Nurse is expected to sponsor legislation that would create a new deadline to shut Rikers Island. File photo by John McCarten/NYC Council Media Unit
“We need to see a plan, we need to see what we are going to agree to between the Council and the administration, what we can reasonably do and what the cost is to get there,” she added.
‘Erase this stain’
With the current deadline on the books a year away, advocates rallied at City Hall on Monday to draw attention to the impending deadline and to Rikers’ population, which has risen every year since 2021, Adams’ first year in office.
The population has remained high under Mamdani. Though the borough-based jails will only have the capacity to hold 4,400 detainees at any given time, there were around 6,710 people held on Rikers in July.
Members of the Close Rikers Coalition called on the mayor and the City Council to find a way to reduce the jails’ population to at least 4,000 in the coming year while also establishing a concrete plan to shut Rikers down for good.
“Today, we're calling on Mayor Mamdani to make decarceration an urgent priority,” Darren Mack, the co-director of the Freedom Agenda, said on Monday.
“Because of resistance and the action from our last mayor, Rikers will not be completely closed by Aug. 31st, 2027,” he added. “But Mayor Mamdani can make sure that a year from today, there are substantially fewer people incarcerated, at least half of the jails on Rikers are closed, and we are firmly back on track to erase this stain from our city.”
Update: This story was updated with a statement from the mayor’s office at 7:22 p.m., on Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2026.
