The planned borough facilities’ population constraints are just too few to keep the city safe
In public policy, there is often a yawning gap between expectation and reality. So it is with the closure of New York City’s jail facilities on Rikers Island.
Five years ago, when it voted to shutter Rikers and replace it with four borough-based jails, the City Council claimed a hard-fought win for safe, humane and effective incarceration. Fast forward to today, and the situation is much messier. Higher interest rates mean construction costs have skyrocketed, putting the new jails over budget and behind timeline. Mayor Eric Adams has repeatedly raised concerns about the viability of closing Rikers by the 2027 deadline. And the Department of Correction remains embattled as its jail system moves ever closer to federal receivership.
Amid this chaos, one key question remains chronically underaddressed. As envisioned by the City Council, the borough jails will have a maximum capacity of 3,300 inmates — an 80% reduction relative to Rikers, which at maximum capacity could hold 15,000 people. This limited capacity is, as I argued last year in a Manhattan Institute report, the greatest challenge to the safety and efficacy of New York’s jail system, on Rikers or off of it. 3,300 beds is simply not enough space to safely detain all of the people New York needs to hold each day.
Continue reading the entire piece here at Vital City
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Charles Fain Lehman is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal.
Photo by Darrin Klimek/Getty Images
