Advocacy group Close Rikers Campaign and City Council members including Lincoln Restler and Tiffany Cabán are calling on Mayor Zohran Mamdani to add $87 million to the city budget for alternatives to incarceration and community reentry programs. They say the funding is necessary to reduce the Rikers Island population enough to close the jail complex by its legally mandated 2027 deadline, as reported by amNewYork following a Tuesday City Council hearing.
Roughly 7,000 people are currently held on Rikers, nearly all of them awaiting trial without a conviction. Advocates and the council members say that figure needs to drop to around 4,000 before the city can shift the remaining population to the four borough-based jails now under construction (not projected to reach full completion until the early to mid 2030s). If the Rikers population does not fall before those facilities open, advocates warn the city could end up filling both Rikers and the new jails at the same time, expanding the total number of people incarcerated rather than reducing it.
The Close Rikers Campaign split the $87 million into two parts: roughly $57 million for alternatives to incarceration and prison diversion programs, and about $30 million for community reentry and support services including low-barrier housing and healthcare. The reentry money targets a specific group: people who have been cleared to leave Rikers but remain detained because they have nowhere to go and no access to the services they need. Mayor Mamdani’s current budget proposal includes some funding for these areas, advocates acknowledged, but not enough to bring the jail population down to the level required for closure.
Samantha Becerra, a representative of advocacy group Providence House, framed the funding request at the hearing as a question of political will. “The conversation about closing Rikers is no longer a question of whether change is needed,” Becerra said. “The question is whether we have the courage to invest in solutions that save lives and strengthen communities.”
Department of Correction Commissioner Stanley Richards, who served time on Rikers as a young man and has since spent his career advocating for alternatives to incarceration, told council members that reducing the jail population was largely outside his agency’s direct control. “Unfortunately, we don’t have control over who comes in the front door or when people leave, other than those who are sentenced to city time,” Richards said. “What we’ve been doing is working with our partners to make sure that they’re engaging with our population and leveraging the resources … to try to get cases processed faster, trying to get people who are appropriate for diversions diverted.” He added that he raises the issue at every opportunity: “I hope it motivates people, engages people to seize this moment to reduce the population.”
Restler pointed to a capacity mismatch: twice as many people from Brooklyn and Staten Island are currently detained on Rikers as would fit in the Brooklyn borough jail once it is completed. “We need to start investing in evidence-based, effective policies … that can reduce incarceration and shorten the length of time that people are spending in Rikers Island,” Restler said. “We need to deepen investments immediately in these programs … so that we can actually shutter Rikers Island and achieve a smaller, safer, and fairer jail system.”
In a statement to amNewYork after the hearing, Cabán argued the money could come from existing DOC staffing budgets. “DOC has the highest staffing ratios in the country, and still, Rikers is a human rights disaster,” Cabán said. “We are legally mandated to close Rikers and reduce the number of people incarcerated. We should be cutting all DOC vacancies, not staffing up.”
City Hall spokesperson Sam Raskin told amNewYork the mayor’s team “looked forward to conversations with the City Council on this critical work as we head toward adoption of the budget.” The city’s final budget is due June 30.
Featured image: Cdogsimmons / Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
