{"id":179811,"date":"2026-03-30T16:48:31","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T16:48:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/179811\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T16:48:31","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T16:48:31","slug":"mamdanis-empty-rikers-plan-would-guarantee-another-crime-spike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/179811\/","title":{"rendered":"Mamdani’s ’empty Rikers’ plan would guarantee another crime spike"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s push to mindlessly free perps held at Rikers is a carbon copy of the de Blasio-era drive that immediately sent crime rates soaring; New Yorkers have zero reason to expect a different result.<\/p>\n

The mayor means to shrink the jail population<\/a> in the name of making the \u201creplace Rikers\u201d plan more feasible, which is ridiculous since his own Correction commissioner, Stanley Richards, just told the City Council, \u201cThe first borough-based jail facility is not expected to reach substantial completion until 2029.\u201d<\/p>\n

And the folks who\u2019d get sprung are not the low-level offenders that the \u201ccriminal-justice reform\u201d crew always pretends.<\/p>\n

\"\"The Mamdani administration plans to reduce Rikers Island inmate populations by expanding supervised release, alternatives to incarceration and early release. Alamy Live News.<\/p>\n

As veteran Queens prosecutor Jim Quinn notes in The Post<\/a>, 95% of those now jailed at Rikers awaiting trial face felony charges, mostly for murder or another violent offense.<\/p>\n

And the no-bail law doesn\u2019t allow the jailing of those facing \u201cnon-violent\u201d charges (car theft, commercial burglary, grand larceny, etc.) except for aggravating circumstances, such as reoffending while on probation or parole, harming someone while released pending trial on other charges, etc.<\/p>\n

The last few years should have taught <\/a>the whole city that a relatively few recidivists are responsible for nearly all major crime; keeping repeat offenders<\/a> off the streets is vital to public safety. <\/p>\n

\t\t\tMore From\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPost Editorial Board<\/p>\n

Mamdani is looking to repeat the idiocy of 2019-\u201920, when state \u201creforms\u201d let 2,000 perps out of Rikers prematurely, then Mayor Bill de Blasio released another 2,000 in the name of reducing COVID spread (though he too was looking to make \u201creplace Rikers\u201d look do-able).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cue the violent crime spike of 2020-\u201921, which the city still hasn\u2019t completely reversed. <\/p>\n

The \u201creform\u201d crowd also already ensured that those held at Rikers are the \u201cworst of the worse\u201d \u2014 individuals so dangerous and malevolent that even the city\u2019s \u201ccut \u2019em loose\u201d judges see the need to jail them.<\/p>\n

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Yet Mamdani has made Richards the first ex-offender to head the city\u2019s jail system; he says he\u2019s working to \u201cresponsibly\u201d reduce the number of people in custody by expanding supervised release, work release and alternatives to incarceration: Watch out.<\/p>\n

They\u2019d do far better working to improve conditions at Rikers: Someone should, since federal Judge Laura Swain, who\u2019s supposed to enforce the decrees \u201cmandating\u201d improvement, just gave her handpicked \u201cremediation manager\u201d up to seven years to get it done.<\/p>\n

Why, in the decade-plus since the federal consent decree began, haven\u2019t the \u201creformers\u201d made compliance their priority?<\/p>\n

It makes you wonder if they\u2019re truly concerned about suffering inside the city\u2019s jails, or just mindlessly determined to get dangerous recidivists back on the streets because crime and chaos is what their vision of \u201cjustice\u201d is really all about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s push to mindlessly free perps held at Rikers is a carbon copy of the de…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":179812,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[303,21470,304,3130,277,9,24,63,70878,299,122,124,123,10739,1083,82],"class_list":["post-179811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-crime","tag-department-of-corrections","tag-editorial","tag-jail","tag-manhattan-federal-court","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-corrections","tag-opinion","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news","tag-rikers","tag-rikers-island","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}