It was something city officials were celebrating.<\/p>\n
A “topping out” ceremony for the city’s new Brooklyn jail \u2014 the first of four new jails set to replace Rikers Island.<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
Rikers Island must legally close in August 2027
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The jail to replace it will not be completed\u00a0
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Jail completion dates are between 2029 and 2032<\/p>\n
The last beam was put in place, putting the structure at approximately 295 feet, towering over downtown Brooklyn.<\/p>\n
Officials signed it before it was placed on top.<\/p>\n
NY1 went inside the building this week.<\/p>\n
“These are the actual cells. They are being protected right now,\u201d said Nina Gladstone, who works for AECOM-Hill, the site\u2019s project manager. \u201cThey get prefabricated off-site. They [are] brought in. [Bring] up the crane and brought on the floor until the glass is finished installed on the exterior. “<\/p>\n
The prefabricated cells were under plastic wrap. In 2029, when this facility is scheduled to open, it will house more than 1,000 detainees.<\/p>\n
“This administration is not focused on a particular deadline,\u201d Correction Commissioner Stanley Richards said. \u201cWhat we’re focused on is our commitment that we’re doing everything in our power to close Rikers.”<\/p>\n
This facility will open about two years after the legal deadline for Rikers Island to close.<\/p>\n
The other facilities in Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx will not open for years after that.<\/p>\n
Some of those sites are holes in the ground or still vacant lots.<\/p>\n
The mayor has acknowledged it will be practically impossible for the city to meet the August 2027 deadline to close Rikers Island.<\/p>\n
“I’ve been having a number of key conversations with key stakeholders from the Department of Correction, the administration, key stakeholder and advocates to really understand what is a responsible and feasible timeline to shut down Rikers for good,” said Councilwoman Selvena Brooks-Powers, who is chair of the council’s criminal justice committee.<\/p>\n
“We are going to have to introduce legislation in the council to amend the existing law because we know 2027 is just not going to happen,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
“Right now there are too many detainees on Rikers Island from Brooklyn to fit in the borough-based jail in Brooklyn,\u201d said Councilman Lincoln Restler, who represents the Brooklyn jail site. \u201cSo, we need to start planning now how [can we] safely and smartly reduce the incarcerated population.”<\/p>\n
In a step toward that, NY1 has learned Mayor Zohran Mamdani has selected a new Rikers czar, Dana Kaplan, who will orchestrate the closure of Rikers and the construction of the new facilities.<\/p>\n
Kaplan worked in the de Blasio administration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was something city officials were celebrating. A “topping out” ceremony for the city’s new Brooklyn jail \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":207871,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[109,25,98,100,99,14647,9,24,12,63,87,27,200],"class_list":["post-207870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-app-local-state-politics","tag-app-top-stories","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-courtney-gross","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-nyc","tag-politics","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207870","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=207870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207870\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}