![\"Jail](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/2025-05-13T193606Z_1811735526_RC26HEANJ3HV_RTRMADP_3_USA-NEW-YORK-PRISON.jpg\" "\\"Editorial")
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Jail cells on Rikers Island<\/p>\n
REUTERS\/Brendan McDermid\/File Photo<\/p>\n
A little more than a year from now, New York City is obligated by its own law, enacted in 2019, to close Rikers Island<\/a>. On Tuesday, Mayor Zohran Mamdani told reporters that meeting the 2027 closure deadline is \u201cpractically impossible.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Mamdani laid blame for the impending inability to close Rikers at the feet of his predecessor, Eric Adams. The former mayor had advocated for the island jail facility\u2019s closure, but he fought the mandated 2027 deadline because, in his view, the city\u2019s closure plan was unworkable.<\/p>\n The Rikers Island closure compact struck between the City Council and then-Mayor Bill de Blasio more than six years ago was to replace the facility with a network of community-based jails to be constructed, accompanied by a gradual reduction in the Rikers population through other criminal justice reform.\u00a0<\/p>\n All these years later, however, the community-based jail network is nowhere near completion, and in many cases has been fought tooth-and-nail by the communities where the facilities are to be constructed. The population of Rikers Island also went up during the Adams years as the city cracked down on a post-pandemic crime surge.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Rikers Island has fallen into federal receivership on top of the federal monitor that had been in place. Under the receivership, the city is being compelled by a federal court to make changes to improve safety for inmates, officers, and staff on the island, along with upgrading infrastructure. There is no set deadline on when that work will be completed.<\/p>\n And inmates on Rikers Island continue to die. Two more inmates succumbed to medical emergencies last month, on top of the 15 individuals who died in custody last year. Mamdani hopes lives will be spared with the opening of a new medical unit at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan designed specifically for inmates with serious medical or mental health needs, potentially lowering the risk of further tragic deaths behind bars.<\/p>\n We are nowhere closer to closing Rikers than we were six years ago. A pittance of progress has been made in improving the facility\u2019s safety. Communities don\u2019t want new jails in their neighborhoods. And in a little more than a year, the city is obligated by law to shut down a jail populated with thousands of people without an alternative.<\/p>\n Mamdani and the City Council have no choice but to stop the clock. They must push to indefinitely suspend the closure plan and work together on a reasonable replacement plan that ensures the proper care of inmates, the safety of staff and officers, the respect of constitutional rights, and the protection of all New Yorkers.<\/p>\n Criminal justice advocates will wail and gnash their teeth over delaying Rikers\u2019 closure. But New York cannot trade an island of horrors for an island of uncertainty.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jail cells on Rikers Island REUTERS\/Brendan McDermid\/File Photo A little more than a year from now, New York…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":78095,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[9894,76351,76352,9645,42427,38902,42207,76353,75,84,83,9,24,76354,63,76355,1260,37302,53639,76356,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-190763","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manhattan","8":"tag-bill-de-blasio","9":"tag-community-based-jails","10":"tag-correctional-facility-management","11":"tag-criminal-justice-reform","12":"tag-eric-adams-legacy","13":"tag-federal-receivership","14":"tag-inmate-deaths","15":"tag-jail-overcrowding","16":"tag-manhattan","17":"tag-manhattan-headlines","18":"tag-manhattan-news","19":"tag-new-york","20":"tag-new-york-city","21":"tag-new-york-city-jails","22":"tag-nyc","23":"tag-nyc-detention-facilities","24":"tag-nyc-politics","25":"tag-prison-reform","26":"tag-public-safety-policy","27":"tag-rikers-island-closure","28":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190763","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=190763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190763\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}