City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams (D-Jamaica) remains steadfast on the closure of Rikers Island by 2027 but some members of the Queens delegation as well as the Mayor Adams administration are less convinced.
“I don’t think there’s a way for it to be done,” Councilwoman Joann Ariola (R-Ozone Park) told the Chronicle.
Last Thursday, the Council held a preliminary budget hearing for the Committee on Criminal Justice and the city Departments of Probation and Correction testified.
Ariola asked Correction Commissioner Louis Molina if, given the fact that the city jails population is nearly double what would fit in the borough-based jails, it would be possible to house them there.
“If we are at today’s number whenever borough-based jails would open or if that number is higher, then it would be physically impossible to house all those individuals within our jail system if our capacity was at 3,300,” Molina answered.
“We would need to come up with alternative solutions of where those individuals would be housed. Now, we could get to a place where we can see declines in the population,” Molina continued.
He said two things are needed: for the adjudication of justice, which is under the control of the state, to be faster and for more hospital capacity for those with mental illness.
“Just recently, we had someone who was waiting to be sentenced and that defendant was in our custody for six years for an attempted murder case,” said Molina. “And when you have almost a thousand people charged with murder in a backlogged court system, then the flow of those defendants is not quick. So ... we are thinking about what are going to be the alternatives if our jail population continues to stay high. And the other thing we’ve talked about a lot this afternoon is mental illness. If the state does not increase the capacity to be able to treat mental illness, and if we’re going to continue to designate via the courts mental health patients with the designation of criminal defendant, then they are a justice system responsibility. If we want to treat them as hospital patients, then we need hospital capacity to do that.”
Molina has said in the past that the jail population could, in fact, rise by 1,000 people by next year.
