Mayor Should Restart Plans For New Jails, Officials Say

KEW GARDENS, QUEENS — City officials are urging Mayor Bill de Blasio to restart the process of closing the notorious Rikers Island jail and build new jails in four boroughs.

Queens Borough President Melinda Katz and Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. sharply rebuked the mayor's office last week for what they said was a failure to collaborate with the local communities that would house the new jails.

"We are deeply disturbed by the lack of meaningful local engagement on the borough-based jails project to date," Katz and Diaz Jr. wrote in a letter dated March 8. "The process of developing the borough-based jails system must start anew."

The letter comes within weeks of the March 25 deadline for the City Planning Commission to certify the jail plan, allowing it to advance to the city's formal review process, known as ULURP. The local community board for the proposed Queens jail, located in Kew Gardens, is expected to vote Tuesday night to oppose the jail plan.

"The irony ... of unveiling a citywide plan for 'modern community-based jails' in the absence of community input is not lost on the boroughs," Katz and Diaz Jr. wrote.

In 2018, the mayor announced plans to build four new jails throughout the city — including ones in Queens and the Bronx — to replace the jail on Rikers Island.

To gather community input on each of the new jails, the Mayor's Office created "Neighborhood Advisory Committees" to meet with local stakeholders. What transpires in those meetings is largely a mystery, because the Mayor's Office has prohibited reporters from attending and tells others not to record the meetings.

Those decisions prompted an outcry when a Patch reporter was barred from a heated meeting in February about the much-contested plan to build a new jail by Queens Criminal Court in Kew Gardens. Advisory committee members had invited other locals to the meeting, and some reporters were able to attend.

"They aren't public meetings. The general public isn't invited en masse," Eric Phillips, a spokesperson for the mayor, wrote on Twitter about the Feb. 28 meeting.

Read Katz and Diaz Jr.'s letter below.