Adopted FY26 budget ramps up efforts to close Rikers Island

If hindsight is 20/20, is foresight 2027? Public safety investments in the adopted $115.9 billion budget centered on the city’s mandate to close Rikers Island as the legal deadline approaches the two-year mark at the end of next month.

Fresh off a lawsuit on opposite sides of the courtroom, Mayor Eric Adams and the City Council agreed to a handshake deal over the “Best Budget Ever” before the new fiscal year began this month. The adopted budget included an additional $13.7 million on top of the $43.3 million in the executive budget for public safety measures.

Such funding mirrored recent recommendations made by the Independent Rikers Commission which called on the city to “surgically ensure no one is jailed who could be safely supported in the community,” as well as addressing mental health and addiction in a recent blueprint on closing Rikers.

“The Council’s successful push for restorations and investments into alternatives to incarceration, justice-involved supportive housing, re-entry services will strengthen these programs’ ability to continue reducing incarceration and re-arrests and providing people services and support they need to achieve stability,” said City Council spokesperson Rendy Desamours over email. “Together, they are crucial components to decreasing the city jail population and advancing the plan to close Rikers and transition to a borough-based jail system.”

The city will certainly miss the 2027 deadline stipulated by city law to close the Rikers Island jails known for disrepair and dangerous conditions. Four borough-based jails currently in construction to hold the people in custody after the closure are all far behind schedule.

But the facilities also hold significantly fewer people by design and will require reducing the jail population to fit the 4,160 bed limit (the city jail population surpassed 7,000 this year due to the recent prison strikes). Investments recommended by the Independent Rikers Commission, many which are included in the budget, can potentially and safely reduce the jail population by 750 people.

$9.1 million went towards the Supervised Release Intensive Care Management pilot which works directly with frequently rearrested New Yorkers to curb recidivism. The program currently operates in two boroughs and remains in a formative stage, according to its architect agency Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice (MOCJ).

Early signs point to double-digit drops in recidivism among participants. The Independent Rikers Commission believes expanding the Supervised Release Intensive Care Management pilot will connect those stuck in the criminal justice cycle to treatment, housing and services, which ensures they return to court and “head off the commission of more crimes.”

Another $8.9 million goes to the longstanding Alternatives to Incarceration (ATI) program, which also operates under MOCJ through 14 nonprofits. The initiative serves as a judge’s discretionary tool for defendants with family support or access to social services to rehabilitate in the community rather than in jail. The program faced a previous cut which the budget restored.

George Washington University professor Faye Taxman previously advised MOCJ on improving ATI and says the initiative’s impact becomes more important with pre-trial decarceration efforts like bail reform. Her recommendations adopted by the city influenced the program’s most recent contracting cycle in 2019 and helped develop more robust services.

“If we’re going to depopulate Rikers, we need to actually have services in place for people that deal with their issues,” said Taxman. “If you have someone who’s been a victim of violence, and therefore the only way they know how to respond is through violence, [the solution] is to actually give them some violence prevention services or to give them services to deal with the trauma that they’ve incurred.”

Stanley Richards, CEO of Fortune Society, one of the Alternatives to Incarceration nonprofits, called the budget a step in the right direction.

“What makes it exciting for me is the overall investment,” said Richards. “The expansion of supervised release by $9.1 million means we are building the capacity to serve more people and to serve them well. The [Alternatives to Incarceration] restoration and $7.6 million baseline to reduce incarceration and recidivism means that we have more slots available for people, while working with the district attorneys and the judges to ensure those who could be safely managed in the community could [actually] be managed in the community and to get access to services.”

A spokesperson for Mayor Eric Adams credited such investments toward keeping the “most vulnerable New Yorkers out of jails and in their communities,” particularly off the heels of one of the safest Fourth of July celebrations in city history.

“Mayor Adams believes that public safety is the prerequisite to prosperity, and the best way to keep people out of jail is by educating and engaging them before they ever make contact with the justice system,” said the city hall spokesperson. “That’s why in our ‘Best Budget Ever,’ we announced millions of dollars in investments toward upstream solutions that support at-risk New Yorkers, address gang, youth, and domestic violence, as well as programming for gun violence prevention initiatives and crisis intervention — all that will help divert people away from crime and put them on a path toward success.”

Another $5 million goes towards increasing electronic monitoring capacity aka ankle bracelets, which the city underutilizes compared to neighborhood counties and will allow courts to release people otherwise detained during pre-trial.

The City Council’s Progressive Caucus brought in $80 million through its Crisis to Care campaign, including $34 million in new funding to improve mental health services and $4.8 million for justice-involved supportive housing.

The adopted budget also put money towards law enforcement oversight with $1.2 million to the Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) and $339,000 to the Board of Correction. The money will help hire more investigators for the CCRB to look into police misconduct and will increase the independent NYPD watchdog’s headcount by 20 employees.

A sweeping budget cut in 2023 limited the CCRB’s ability to probe police misconduct, leading to 1,440 complaints getting closed last year without a full investigation in what the agency calls a “Strategic Resource Allocation Determination.”

“We thank Mayor Adams and the City Council for this new budget,” said CCRB interim chair Dr. Mohammad Khalid. “While it is still short of meeting all the Agency’s needs, the CCRB hopes the new funding will enable the hiring of more staff, allowing it to investigate more complaints in a timely fashion. It is also the CCRB’s intent that this budget will enable the end of Strategic Resource Allocation Determination closures, in which the Agency closed complaints that only included certain allegations without any investigation.”