Rikers Island jails won’t close by 2027 deadline, independent commission finds

New York City will not meet its legally mandated goal of closing Rikers Island by 2027 and replacing it with smaller jails in four boroughs, according to the independent commission responsible for charting the notorious jail complex's future.

In an over 100-page report released Wednesday, the Independent Rikers Commission said the city had failed to sufficiently advance the borough-based jails envisioned last decade when then-Mayor Bill de Blasio and the City Council announced the closure plans.

Reports of corruption, sexual assault, physical violence, incompetence and death on Rikers have only grown since then. A federal judge has signaled the complex may need to be taken over by an outside entity known as a receiver, with the matter remaining in court.

But the commission said the city should still be aggressive in building the new jails.

“NYC can build the jails at least a year faster than the city currently plans, speeding the closure of Rikers and easing the burden on local neighborhoods,” it said in its report.

The report added that the law mandating Rikers’ closure by Aug. 31, 2027 should remain in place until the Council and Mayor Eric Adams’ administration can agree “on a path forward that assures progress.” The commission did not lay out exactly what that path was, though it wrote in a footnote to the report that “it might be possible to find temporary swing space to close Rikers once at least three of the [replacement] jails and all the secure hospital beds are open, but before the fourth jail — likely Manhattan — is finished.”

Under the 2019 closure law and associated zoning changes, it will be illegal to incarcerate anyone on Rikers after August 2027, according to the report.

The panel was revived in October 2023 to make a new plan for closing Rikers by the 2027 deadline. The COVID-19 pandemic had delayed court proceedings and the borough-based jail projects, which are located in every borough but Staten Island.

Now, after more than a year of research and analysis, the commission — also known as the Lippman Commission after its chair, former Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman — is recommending expediting the construction of the planned replacement jails and using more than 100 secure treatment beds at Manhattan's Bellevue Hospital for very ill detainees, among other steps.

Those include accelerating criminal cases to reduce the jail population — which is currently more than 6,800 people, according to the report — expanding initiatives for people who have mental illness and reoffend, opening more psychiatric treatment beds, and increasing supportive housing.

“For decades, Rikers has been marked by dysfunction, violence and neglect — failing not only incarcerated people, but the staff and the entire city,” Lippman said in a statement on Wednesday. “Our blueprint lays out a clear path for Rikers to be closed safely, as is required by law.”

The report noted that Rikers’ current population is at least 200 people higher than it would have been if the recent New York prison workers strike had not slowed transfers of incarcerated people to state prisons.

“All transfers from Rikers to state prisons have been halted until March 31, leaving over 340 people who have been convicted and sentenced to state prison stuck at Rikers, a number likely to continue to grow until transfers resume,” the report says.

In a statement on Wednesday, Mayor Eric Adams said his administration has “always supported” the closure of Rikers and cast the report as a vindication of his long-held stance that the 2027 closure date is not “realistic.”

“We are glad that the Lippman Commission is finally recognizing what we have been sounding the alarm on for years — the plan for Rikers was flawed and did not offer a realistic timeline,” he said. “It is critical that the city is able to unlock additional emergency capital funds — which the law passed by the City Council and the previous administration currently prohibits us from doing — to ensure that we can continue to provide adequate services to both staff and people in our charge.”

City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, who pushed for the commission to be reestablished and is now running for mayor, said the administration “must be willing to take concrete action steps and dedicate resources required to implement this blueprint, so another viable plan does not go unfulfilled.”

“There is no shortcut to the work ahead, and there can be no discussions about the legal closure date without these types of commitments from the administration,” she added in a statement.

Rendy Desamours, a spokesperson for the Council, also took issue with the mayor’s management of the closure plan to date. "People have been dying on Rikers, and are less safe in our neighborhoods because the mayor has failed the city on public safety by dropping the ball on the last plan to close Rikers,” Desamours said in a statement. “We are all worse off by keeping Rikers open and New Yorkers can’t afford more inaction that fails them again."

A spokesperson for the mayor declined to comment on that allegation, but said some councilmembers have spoken out against the replacement plans.

According to the report, none of the borough-based jails are close to open. The Brooklyn facility, which is being built on the site of a previous jail on Atlantic Avenue in Boerum Hill, is the furthest along and has a target completion date of 2029. The Bronx facility is currently slated to be finished in 2031, while the Queens and Manhattan facilities would not be finished until at least 2032, the report said. The four replacement jails, which have met with significant public opposition, could cost the city more than $13 billion total, a recent City Council report found.

The commission is also calling for the hiring of a full-time staffer at City Hall who would solely focus on closing Rikers Island, and another full-time staffer at the Department of Correction who would help the agency transition to the borough-based jails.

Rikers Island has long housed detainees with mental illness awaiting trial. According to the report, it’s currently the second-largest psychiatric facility in the United States: 57% of incarcerated people there, or almost 4,000, have a mental illness, including 1,400 who have a serious mental illness. Many Rikers detainees are homeless and have cycled in and out of jail from the streets or shelter.

The Adams administration has been grappling with how to handle people who are homeless and struggling with mental illness, and the mayor is pushing to expand authorities’ power to commit people to psychiatric treatment without their consent.

The report also addresses serious safety concerns about Rikers, where more than 60 detainees have died since 2020, according to the commission. Just this week, Rikers detainee Ariel Quidone became critically ill and died after spending about a week in jail on robbery charges. Two other detainees have died in city Department of Correction custody so far this year, officials said.

This story has been updated with additional information.