Rikers’ Planned Closure Sparks Criminal Justice Reform Debate

By Zion Decoteau

The New York City Council’s vote to close The Rikers Island Prison Complex was celebrated by criminal justice reform groups, but faced scrutiny from other organizations. 

“Incarceration is not the solution to crime,” said Sarita Daftary-Steel of Just Leadership USA— a criminal justice reform non profit. “It in fact, it often amplifies the problem when people are  traumatized during the period of their incarceration, also when they return home and are excluded from many opportunities,” she adds.

Mayor Bill deBlasio and other city democrats support the plan. They claim that falling crime rates and criminal justice reform mean the city will only need to accommodate approximately 3,000 prisoners a day. This is a major cut back from the 7,000 individuals currently imprisoned in New York City, and the 22,000 individuals imprisoned in 1991. Daftary-Steel’s sentiments are similar:  

“Having an entire island dedicated to incarceration just allows for far more jail capacity than New York City ever needed.” Her organization, JLUSA, calls for the reduction of city jails from 12 to four, and for the city’s max incarceration capacity to be lowered from 15,000 to 3,000. 

“The fact that the jail population has dropped from 20,000 to 7,000 and New York City is safer than it’s ever been is a good indicator of why we need to keep going,” Sarita Daftary-Steel said.

To make up for closing Rikers, the city plans to shell out over $8 billion for the construction of four new jails across four of the five boroughs. The jails will be located in Downtown Brooklyn, Kew Gardens, Queens, and Lower Manhattan. Staten Island won’t get a new facility due to its low prison population. 

The borough based jails will put prisoners closer to the community in contrast the isolated location of Rikers Island. 

“The isolation [of Rikers] functions primarily to keep people from their family, from their lawyer, from support services, all of the things that would actually enable people to have fair trials, while they are waiting for their trials, which is a majority of people on Rikers,”  Daftary-Steel adds. “Access to family and access to therapy are key to people’s mental state while they are incarcerated. The lack of that, drives violence.”

The four new jails plan to incorporate more “humane” living conditions such as natural light,  calling prisoners by name, larger cell space, allowance for personal prison cell decoration, and for no future prisons constructed to resemble Rikers’ design structure. This raised some eyebrows, particularly with Frederick Fusco, chairman of the Correction Officers Benevolent Association at at a joint hearing of the NYC Council committees on General Welfare and Criminal Justice on October 2. He criticized Manhattan Councilman Keith Powers’ call for the four proposed prisons’ cells to be constructed from non metallic materials, which Powers claims are more humane.

“If you use ceramic toilet, it is known that they [inmates] will make a weapon out of that. Porcelain toilets, ceramic floor tiles- weapons can be made, and they have been.” Fusco said.

Finally, in addition to closing Rikers, JLUA advocates for the reallocation of $7.3 Billion from the Department of Corrections to community needs across the five boroughs. 

“When there were fifteen thousand people in New York City jails, New York City had about ten thousand correction officers, today there are 7,000 people in NYC jails, and there will soon be a lot less because of the state laws that passed about limiting money bail,” says Daftary Steel. “But we still have ten thousand correction officers.” she adds.  

As for what would happen to those jobs upon reduction, Daftary Steel says “Those jobs shouldn’t necessarily go away, they could hire more people in the parks department, it can just be shifted somewhere else. They could hire more people in transit, more people as mental health first responders. There would need to be training to be transitioned to those roles.” 

There is a split among those who advocate for Rikers’ closure however. Some argue that the four new jails aren’t needed at all. Organizations such as No New Jails  advocate that they way America deals with criminals should be entirely rethought. The organization has even gotten the attention and support of rising Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.  JLUSA is cautious on that matter. 

“If we could snap a magic wand and have everyone’s housing needs and everyone’s, you know, basic needs, everyone’s basic education needs, health needs met tomorrow, maybe we wouldn’t even need those four [new jails],” says Daftary-Steel “but we’re not quite there yet.”