Here's Where Rikers Island Inmates Will Go When Jails Close (2024)

The city plans to build a new jail in the Bronx, reopen one in Queens and move inmates to others in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Posted Wed, Feb 14, 2018 at 1:11 pm ET|Updated Wed, Feb 14, 2018 at 5:08 pm ET

The Manhattan Detention Complex in Chinatown, the Brooklyn Detention Complex in Downtown Brooklyn, the now-shuttered Queens Detention Complex in Kew Gardens and a new jail at the site of the NYPD's Bronx tow pound in Mott Haven will replace Rikers' nine jails once the island's inmate population gets below 5,000, Mayor Bill de Blasio said.

City officials will submit plans by the end of this year to build, open and expand the jails as a single land-use application to the City Council under an agreement with Speaker Corey Johnson. That could speed up de Blasio's 10-year timeline to close Rikers.

"Ten years is too long," Johnson said at a City Hall news conference Wednesday. "I've been telling the mayor that and the mayor agrees."

The official plans for smaller jails mark another major step toward moving the city's inmates out of the 85-year-old Rikers complex notorious for its isolation, violence and mismanagement, a process de Blasio started last year. But it's also likely to set off the effort's most contentious stage city officials grapple with potential community opposition to jails opening or expanding.

The Manhattan and Brooklyn Detention Complexes currently house more than 1,200 inmates, according to the Department of Correction. The vast majority are awaiting trials in Manhattan, Brooklyn or Staten Island. Inmates at the Queens Detention Complex were moved to Rikers after the jail shuttered in 2002.

The city has hired the architecture firm Perkins Eastman to create plans for expanding those three jails and opening the fourth in the Bronx to hold up to 5,000 inmates. The borough-based jails can only house as many as 2,300 people now, the city says. Around 9,000 are jailed at Rikers on a given day, 20 percent fewer than when de Blasio took office, officials said.

Under de Blasio and Johnson's agreement, all four projects will be submitted in a single application for the land-use review process, which requires hearings before local community boards, borough presidents, the City Planning Commission and the City Council. The city plans to submit an initial application by the end of 2018 and start designing new jails by mid-2019.

De Blasio declined to say how much the consolidated review could speed up Rikers' closure. But he and Johnson said that depends on statewide criminal justice reforms, including an end to cash bail and policies that speed up criminal trials. Rikers' population could shrink even faster if the state takes its own parolees out of city jails, de Blasio said.

"If all that gets done, we can speed this timeline up by years," de Blasio said. "But I want to also be scrupulously honest that those things aren't done yet."

City Council members voiced support for opening or expanding jails in their districts, pledging that the city would address all community concerns. But Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. said the selection of the Mott Haven site was a surprise to him, indicating the city must do better when it comes to outreach.

"Presenting the selection of this site as a fait accompli undermines the entire process, and has the potential to derail necessary criminal justice reform," Diaz said in a statement.

Wednesday's announcement comes as the city faces new criticism of conditions in Rikers despite efforts to close it. The state Commission on Correction named the island one of New York's five worst locally run jail systems in a new report Wednesday. And correction officers protested outside de Blasio's State of the City address Tuesday night, three days after a group of inmates attacked jail guard Jean Souffrant at a Rikers jail.

(Lead image: The Brooklyn Detention Complex is one of four borough-based jails that will replace the Rikers Island complex. Image from Google Maps)