The city has three years to close Rikers – is it possible? — Queens Daily Eagle

Still, both sides agree on one thing: Rikers' closure is in the hands of the mayor, who has done little to ensure the city can meet its 2027 target date.

“It's not clear that we have a willing partner who wants to work with the council and bring together all the stakeholders who have different pieces of the solution,” Nurse said. “Given this framework, I think we still have a lot of work to do.”

Last week, the Eagle asked the mayor's press office a series of questions about the Rikers closure, including whether City Hall believed the city would be able to close Rikers by the deadline, when the mayor would unveil his plan to close Rikers and whether the Adams administration plans to challenge the legislation mandating the Rikers closure in court.

A City Hall spokesman declined to respond to the Eagle's specific questions, but said it has become “painfully clear that the plan approved under the last administration leaves serious questions unanswered about the City's ability to keep New Yorkers safe, and we look forward to [Independent Rikers Commission’s] Recommendations on how to advance this plan following its publication.”

“But as Mayor Adams has said repeatedly, this administration will always follow the law, and we remain committed to completing the county jails, what we must do to protect public safety, provide humane conditions for those incarcerated, and close the jails on Rikers Island – there is simply no other path forward,” the spokesman said.

The path not taken

In late 2022, less than a year after Adams took office, the independent Rikers Commission released a report titled “Halfway to History.”

In it, the commission, chaired by former Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman, outlined how the city could “achieve this historic achievement. [of closing Rikers] by reducing crime and reducing the prison population safely and intelligently.”

The report listed a handful of challenges, most of them caused by the pandemic, that made it difficult for the city to meet the 2027 deadline. It also listed a number of steps the city could take to overcome them.

But two years later, the same challenges still exist.

At the top of the list was the rising prison population, which the 2022 report said was “artificially inflated.”

The county's jails were originally designed to hold 3,300 inmates, but Adams said last year that they would increase the number of beds so the jails could hold a total of 4,160 inmates. However, the current population at Rikers is still too large.

When the report was released, there were about 5,870 inmates incarcerated daily at Rikers. In May of this year, the most recent month available, the average daily incarceration was about 6,300 inmates.

Overall, the number of prisoners has increased by about 1,000 since Adams took office.