City vows to close Rikers

“The report recommends the closure of Rikers by showing we can drop the population of people who are incarcerated in this city by nearly half and make recommendations as to how the island can be used in different ways”.

“If you’re going to defeat mass incarceration you’re going to have to go to the root causes”, he told worshippers at the predominantly black Christian Cultural Center megachurch in East New York.

Mayor de Blasio vowed yesterday at a news conference in the City Hall rotunda to close Rikers Island within a decade.

Mark-Viverito commissioned a report a year ago on the possibility of closing Rikers.

The commission’s report recommends that the five jail sites be closer to court facilities, which they said would reduce the annual $31 million cost of transporting inmates to and from court hearings, and would also provide inmates with more opportunities to see their families, which would help in their rehabilitation.

The scrutiny reached new heights in 2015 after Kalief Browder, a Bronx teenager, hanged himself following his time in Rikers. He spent two years of the three in solitary confinement, all for the charge of stealing a backpack, before he was released.

“The modern thinking on this is that the defendants in prostitution cases, whether it’s around the world or around the corner, are victims”, Commission Chairman and former state Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman said Sunday while formally releasing the report. The transition is to take place over the next 10 years, leading to Rikers’ closure. His stance has softened on account of the city’s falling crime rate, which he said makes Rikers’ closure more attainable on a 10-year timeline. “The solution we propose is to make the jail the last resort with a goal, and not just the path of least resistance”, he says.

In announcing news of the plan on Friday, de Blasio called Rikers “an example and an expression” of the nation’s mass incarceration crisis.
“I saw fights people get stabbed, it really is survival of the fittest when you’re in there”, said Stanley Richards, a member of the commission who was locked up when he was a teen for robbery. Developers and investors have been eagerly awaiting an announcement regarding the prison. Some of the possibilities include using the island as a waste treatment facility, a renewable energy hub or a runway expansion to nearby LaGuardia Airport.

Source: The Normangee Star