Rikers Island closing is ‘flawed,’ Adams says as he asks NYC Council for new plan
Mayor Eric Adams raised concerns yet again over the closing of Rikers Island by 2027 — urging City Council members on Tuesday to reevaluate the plan to account for safety and desired reforms.
“It was a flawed plan from the beginning,” Adams said in some of his most decisive comments to date on the planned closing of the infamous island jail.
“Everyone created this ideal environment, and now we’re stuck with something that started at one price tag, and now it has ballooned beyond belief,” Adams said during a speech at the New York Law School Tuesday morning.
The mayor said his administration “must sit down” with council members to find another solution with the current increased incarcerated population being too much for the borough-based jails to handle.
The City Council signed off on closing the troubled jail back in 2019 on a push from Mayor Bill de Blasio.
The $8.7 billion project would replace Rikers with smaller jails in each of the city’s boroughs, aside from Staten Island, which advocates have said would make it easier for family members to visit inmates.
But since Adams took office, he has repeatedly raised concerns about hitting that 2027 deadline, saying in 2022, the plan may need readjusting.
“I think the City Council must look at this plan … and see how can we come up with a plan that gets the reform we are looking for and the safety we are looking for,” Adams said later on Tuesday during an unrelated press conference.
“We all as leaders need to come back and say, ‘How do we even deal with this issue that we are faced with and a few years?'” the mayor continued but conceded he would follow the law.
