New Videos Examine Crime Victims\u2019 Support for Closing Rikers, the Jail Complex\u2019s Mental Health Crisis, and Rikers\u2019 Impact on Vulnerable Populations<\/p>\n
Full Six-Part Series Aims to Educate New Yorkers about Rikers\u2019 Negative Impact on Public Safety and about the Plan to Safely Close the Jails\u00a0<\/p>\n
View the Full Video Series Here<\/a><\/p>\n NEW YORK, NY (September 16, 2026) \u2013 With Rikers Island legally required to close in less than a year, the Independent Rikers Commission<\/a>\u00a0today released the final three videos in its six-part So Many Reasons to Close Rikers<\/a>\u00a0video series, highlighting additional ways the dangerous and decrepit jail complex harms New Yorkers and undermines public safety.<\/p>\n The three videos are being released today:<\/p>\n \u201cThese videos underscore the ugly reality that Rikers hurts public safety,\u201d said Commission Chair and Former Chief Judge of New York State Jonathan Lippman.\u00a0\u201cRikers fails crime survivors, people with serious mental illness, women and young adults. Now is the time to work together to ensure we have a criminal justice system that honors and supports victims, ensures access to treatment, and no longer churns out people worse off than when they went in. That\u2019s how we build a safer, more just New York City.\u201d<\/p>\n The Commission launched the first three <\/a>videos<\/a>\u00a0in August, exploring why Rikers needs to close, the plan to safely close the jails complex, and the enormous financial cost of maintaining it. Together, the six-part series gives New Yorkers a clearer understanding of the human, financial, and public safety harms of Rikers \u2013 and the safer, more effective alternatives that already exist.<\/p>\n The series was produced by the Commission\u2019s summer youth fellows and staff, and the\u00a0staff and young people of Echoes of Incarceration<\/a>. The videos will be used in workshops across NYC schools and other community-based settings, led by the Commission\u2019s new Outreach <\/a>Justice<\/a>\u00a0Ambassadors<\/a>, young adults trained to educate their peers about the urgent need to close Rikers, the plan to do so, and why it will lead to a safer New York.<\/p>\n ###<\/p>\n About the Independent Rikers Commission\u00a0<\/p>\n The Independent Rikers Commission<\/a>\u00a0seeks to help the City of New York close the jail complex on Rikers Island, improve safety and the functioning of the criminal justice system, safely reduce unnecessary incarceration, develop state-of-the-art, borough-based jails and secure treatment beds, and repurpose Rikers as a hub of green infrastructure. Chaired by former New York State Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman, the Commission is an independent body of civic leaders from many backgrounds, including corrections, law enforcement, victims\u2019 services, the judiciary, healthcare, service provision, business, and people who have spent time behind bars. The Commission released its Blueprint to Close Rikers<\/a>, laying out all the steps needed to close Rikers and replace it with a safer, more effective, more humane system, in 2025.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Independent Rikers Commission\u00a0 | September 17, 2026 New Videos Examine Crime Victims\u2019 Support for Closing Rikers, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":350111,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-350110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350110","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=350110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350110\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/350111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}