{"id":255608,"date":"2026-06-04T20:09:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T20:09:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/255608\/"},"modified":"2026-06-04T20:09:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T20:09:10","slug":"nyc-budget-mamdani-and-city-council-urged-to-boost-funding-for-jail-alternatives-to-reduce-rikers-island-population-prep-for-closure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/255608\/","title":{"rendered":"NYC budget: Mamdani and City Council urged to boost funding for jail alternatives to reduce Rikers Island population, prep for closure"},"content":{"rendered":"

Advocates and City Council members seeking to get the city moving on closing Rikers Island<\/a>\u00a0say Mayor Zohran Mamdani<\/a> needs to allocate tens of millions more in the new NYC budget to make it happen sooner rather than later.<\/p>\n

Rikers is legally mandated to close by 2027, but it\u2019s more than likely the jail complex won\u2019t shutter then: the four borough-based jails are currently not tracked for full completion until the early to mid 2030s.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The funding is being sought for prison diversion programs, alternatives to incarceration, and community reentry efforts so the Rikers population can drop low enough for the jail complex to close by 2027, with remaining inmates being sent to borough-based jails that have about half the capacity.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Advocacy group Close Rikers Campaign said on Tuesday the budget needs about $57 million more for alternatives to incarceration and prison diversion programs and roughly $30 million more for community reentry and support programs, such as low-barrier housing and healthcare, so people aren\u2019t staying on Rikers after they\u2019ve been given the green light to leave because they don\u2019t have access to resources and have the support necessary so they don\u2019t back up in Rikers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe conversation about closing Rikers is no longer a question of whether change is needed,\u201d said Samantha Becerra, a representative of advocacy group Providence House. \u201cThe question is whether we have the courage to invest in solutions that save lives and strengthen communities.\u201d <\/p>\n

Alternatives to incarceration programs Close Rikers Campaign and council members, including Lincoln Restler (D-Brooklyn) and Tiffany Cab\u00e1n (D-Queens), say they need more funding for alternatives to jail, community-based correction programs, community-based mental health programs and \u201ccrisis respite centers\u201d that aim to offer people support to prevent crime from happening in the first place.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mamdani\u2019s current budget proposal includes some funding for such initiatives, but advocates say more is needed in order to reduce the jail population to a level where the city can shift the population to borough-based jails. <\/p>\n

Currently, roughly 7,000 people, nearly all of whom have not been convicted of a crime and are awaiting trial, are being held on Rikers. That number will need to be nearly halved, to just around 4,000, for the jail complex to completely close and the move of remaining inmates to the borough-based jails to take place.<\/p>\n

\"\"Advocates speak in support of more city budget funding for prison diversion programs.Photo by Isabella Gallo<\/p>\n

When asked on Tuesday what steps the Department of Correction is taking to safely reduce the jail population by council members, Correction Commissioner Stanley Richards said that doing so was largely out of his hands, but he was committed to doing everything within his power to decrease the number of people imprisoned on Rikers.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately, we don\u2019t have control over who comes in the front door or when people leave, other than those who are sentenced to city time,\u201d said Richards. \u201cWhat we\u2019ve been doing is working with our partners to make sure that they\u2019re engaging with our population and leveraging the resources \u2026 to try to get cases processed faster, trying to get people who are appropriate for diversions diverted.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery opportunity I get, I say, \u2018We need to work together on population reduction,\u2019\u201d added Richards, who himself served time in Rikers as a young man and has spent his career advocating for alternatives to incarceration. \u201cI hope it motivates people, engages people to seize this moment to reduce the population.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s critical for the jail population to drop before the borough-based jails are completed, advocates say, otherwise they fear the city feeling emboldened to imprison people across Rikers and the four borough-based jails simultaneously, which they\u2019re concerned would result in the incarcerated population further ballooning.<\/p>\n

Restler said the city urgently needed \u201can all-hands-on-deck approach to driving down unnecessary incarceration\u201d via diversion and alternative to prison programs, pointing out that there were currently twice as many people from Brooklyn and Staten Island detained on Rikers as would be able to fit in the Brooklyn borough jail, once it\u2019s built.<\/p>\n

\"\"Restler rallies outside City Hall to push Mamdani to invest more in alternatives to incarceration.Photo by Isabella Gallo<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to start investing in evidence-based, effective policies \u2026 that can reduce incarceration and shorten the length of time that people are spending in Rikers Island,\u201d Restler said. \u201cWe need to deepen investments immediately in these programs \u2026 so that we can actually shutter Rikers Island and achieve a smaller, safer, and fairer jail system.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked whether Mamdani would consider including these investments in the city\u2019s final budget, City Hall spokesperson Sam Raskin told amNewYork the mayor\u2019s team \u201clooked forward to conversations with the City Council on this critical work as we head toward adoption of the budget.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a statement to amNewYork after Tuesday\u2019s hearing, Cab\u00e1n suggested the money DOC\u2019s spending on filling staff vacancies could be used to fund these programs. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cDOC has the highest staffing ratios in the country, and still, Rikers is a human rights disaster,\u201d Cab\u00e1n said. \u201cWe are legally mandated to close Rikers and reduce the number of people incarcerated. We should be cutting all DOC vacancies, not staffing up.\u201d<\/p>\n

The city\u2019s final budget is due June 30.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Advocates and City Council members seeking to get the city moving on closing Rikers Island\u00a0say Mayor Zohran Mamdani…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":255609,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[14927,99575,38901,2710,9,56,63,65,64,10739],"class_list":["post-255608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-city-budget","tag-close-rikers","tag-department-of-correction","tag-law","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-rikers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255608","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=255608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255608\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}