Council working on bill to push back Rikers Island closure deadline
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The City Council is currently drafting a bill to extend the deadline to close Rikers and replace it with four borough-based jails
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Advocates accuse Mamdani of continuing ‘broken windows’ policing
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New data released this week shows that the number of NYPD arrests over low-level or non-criminal issues remains as high, if not, higher, under Mayor Zohran Mamdani than it was under former Mayor Eric Adams, angering advocates and lawmakers.
Read MoreCity misses deadline to release Rikers shutdown plan
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The city blew past a legal deadline Friday to release a detailed plan for closing Rikers Island, leaving its long-delayed effort to shutter the dangerous jail complex without a clear path forward.
Read MoreBrooklyn BP launches NY7 bid while Queens candidates wait in the wings
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Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso announced his bid to succeed retiring Representative Nydia Velázquez in Congress on Thursday, making him the first major candidate to throw their hat in the ring to represent the Queens and Brooklyn district.
Read MoreCouncil passes bill to spur use of Rikers work release program
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The City Council this week unanimously passed a bill that would require the Department of Correction to be more transparent about its use of a work release program meant to reduce the number of people housed on Rikers Island.
Read MoreVelázquez to retire, opening up a new race in Queens
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Representative Nydia Velázquez announced Thursday night she will retire next year, opening up a new primary for a congressional seat in Queens and Brooklyn.
Read MoreCouncil celebrates judicial ruling keeping ICE off Rikers
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The City Council on Tuesday celebrated its victory over the Adams administration, successfully suing to prevent a mayoral executive order allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on Rikers Island from taking effect.
Read MoreWith 2027 out of reach, Council passes bills to move Rikers’ closure along
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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.
Read MoreState-ready prisoners slowly begin to move off Rikers but major concerns remain
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For the first time in months, the number of New Yorkers being processed into the state’s prisons is higher than the number being declared “state ready” in local jails throughout the state, Department of Corrections and Community Supervision officials say.
Read MoreDays after commission issues plan to close Rikers, mayor charts his own path – with few details
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Two days after a city-appointed commission unveiled a new plan to close Rikers Island, Mayor Eric Adams began to chart his own path regarding the dangerous jail complex’s future.
Read MoreMayor makes vague pitch to turn borough-based jail into mental health treatment facility
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Mayor Eric Adams pitched a vague plan to turn one of the city’s proposed – and extremely delayed – borough-based jail facilities into a mental health treatment jail, confusing advocates and lawmakers who say the mayor has thus far resisted calls to support treatment facilities and programs for detainees.
Read More‘Who could I tell?’: Council grills DOC after victims detail sexual abuse on Rikers
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Around a year after hundreds of lawsuits were filed against the Department of Correction by New Yorkers who said they were sexually abused while incarcerated on Rikers Island, top officials in the DOC attempted to convince fuming lawmakers on Thursday that they were taking the allegations seriously.
Read MoreFormer Rikers worker says DOC locks mentally ill detainees inside cells for weeks
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Detainees with mental health issues are sometimes locked inside cells for weeks or months at a time without access to their needed medication and left to deteriorate, a former social worker on Rikers Island told the jails’ watchdog board on Tuesday.
Read More‘I cried that whole night’: Families say DOC did little to tell them their loved ones died on Rikers
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A City Council bill discussed Friday would define the procedures the DOC and Correctional Health Services – the branch of the city’s hospital system that provides medical care on Rikers Island – should take to notify an incarcerated person’s emergency contacts when that person is seriously injured, hospitalized or attempts suicide.
Read MoreThe city has three years to close Rikers – can it be done?
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As the three-year countdown to the closure of the jails on Rikers Island begins this week, major questions remain about whether or not the city will – or even can – meet the August 2027 deadline to shutter the notorious complex.
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