Members of the de Blasio administration continue to move toward the closure of the notoriously dangerous Rikers Island jail complex, calling the project "a moral imperative." But securing community support for the four new jails that will hold roughly 5,000 inmates is proving difficult.
Some neighborhood forums have been rife with protests, both from anti-prison activists and community residents concerned about the impact of the new detention centers in Queens, the Bronx, Manhattan, and Brooklyn.
"It did surprise me, because it felt so far away from the kind of celebration that we saw when the Mayor initially announced 'We're going to close Rikers,'" said Maurice Chammah, a staff writer at The Marshall Project reporting on the de Blasio administration's efforts. "People kind of were surprised when these plans started coming out, that they felt like they hadn't been brought along."
Overall, the mayor's team has said that the new jails will have dedicated space for family visitation, educational programming, and therapeutic services. The detention centers will also be closer to courthouses and public transit.
"All of that are these sort of great ideas that have been floated to put into these jails and are being advanced, but all of these take space, and the result is that you have taller and taller buildings," Chammah told WNYC's Jami Floyd.
City officials announced Friday that early designs for the four new facilities have been reduced in height in response to community concerns. Individual facilities will also no longer be segregated by gender, after the public engagement process convinced the city to make the Queens facility for women only.
But many details about the plans remain unknown, and community members continue to push for more opportunities for public input. The city has said it will continue engaging with stakeholders for the duration of the process, including the upcoming land use review.
Officials have estimated that construction for the new facilities will begin in 2021 and conclude in 2027.