NYC PUBLIC ADVOCATE CONDEMNS MAYOR’S FAILURE TO MOVE TOWARD CLOSING RIKERS AND PROTECTING NEW YORKERS

 

With the city far behind its legal deadline to close Rikers Island by 2027, New York City Public Advocate Jumaane D. Williams condemned the Adams administration for their lack of progress toward the goal and efforts which undermine it. This comes after the administration agreed last week to allow ICE onto Rikers in violation of the law, and the City Council moved to sue as a result.

“This has been an open secret, as the Adams administration has sat on its hands for most of its tenure, allowing the dysfunction in the jails to spiral and the death toll to rise,” said Public Advocate Williams on the delayed closure. “Though the jail population reached historic lows during the pandemic, and despite the planned borough-based jails’ capacity of only about 4,500 people, this administration has facilitated a consistent rise in the number of people incarcerated on Rikers Island every year since Adams took office. This lack of diligence and urgency has compromised the dignity and safety of people on both sides of the bars, and has cost at least 38 people their lives. 

“The blame for the city’s imminent failure to meet its deadline cannot be placed solely on Mayor Adams,” he continued. “But that is no exoneration from the direct and clear failure to put any systems at all in place to move toward this deadline.” He cited the administration’s anti-transparency policies and refusal to implement Local Law 42, saying “Efforts to obfuscate the abuse and dysfunction in the jails and to shirk transparency and accountability—including through dubiously legal executive orders to get around city laws the mayor doesn’t like—have exacerbated the suffering on Rikers Island.”

Public Advocate Williams further highlighted the enormous cost – $400,000 a year – of keeping a single person on Rikers, and raised his resolution as a cost-effective way of helping to prevent recidivism and promote public safety. Helping people meet immediate costs post-incarceration, he said, “is a relatively inexpensive, tangible way that we can ease the transition from incarceration back into the community.”

Finally, the Public Advocate emphasized the need for accountability and change, asking “How we can avoid another mayoral tenure—be it under Eric Adams, hopefully not, or someone else—of inaction and negligence.”