To Finally Close Rikers, Panel Suggests Making It Someone’s Only Job

New York|To Finally Close Rikers, Panel Suggests Making It Someone’s Only Job

A commission on closing the Rikers Island jail complex urged New York City to appoint two senior officials to focus solely on shutting down the notoriously troubled jail, part of a series of recommendations designed to accomplish a goal mandated six years ago.

The city is not on track to meet the deadline of August 2027 to close Rikers, required by a law the City Council passed in 2019. But the goal could be furthered by having one person in City Hall and another embedded in the Department of Correction whose only job is to get it done, said a report released this week from a group that the speaker of the City Council, Adrienne Adams, convened.

“Decrepit, dysfunctional and violent, Rikers is a crumbling, inordinately expensive incubator of misery and reoffending,” the report said. “Every day its eight operating jails are open, incarcerated people and staff are at grave, unnecessary risk, and public safety is degraded.”

The report was released days after the death of a 20-year-old who was found in his cell at Rikers. The man, Ariel Quidone, had been arrested on robbery charges this month. He was the third person this year to die either while being held at city jails or shortly after being released from custody.

The independent commission’s new report is the second time city leaders have been given a path toward closing the complex and replacing it with four borough-based jails. The proposed jails are meant to be more humane and closer to detainees’ lawyers and families. The report proposes changes that are intended to ease overcrowding in the lockups and assist neighborhood that would have the new, smaller jails.

Closing Rikers would save $2.2 billion annually in operating and overtime costs, the new report said. Holding one detainee costs more than $400,000 annually.