"Today, the price tag has ballooned to $1516 billion and the City's own Budget Director has admitted the 2027 mandate won't be met. Major contracts for Queens ($3.9B) and the Bronx ($2.9B) alone already exceed $7 billion. Brooklyn is two years behind schedule. Manhattan isn't projected to finish until 2032five years after the legal deadline to shutter Rikers. And the original plan's total capacity3,300 bedsis less than half of Rikers' population as recently as March 2025 (over 7,000)."
"Here's the truth: Rikers Island as it exists today is a human-rights failureoutdated, unsafe, unacceptable. It must be closed as we know it. But the City's borough-based jails scheme is the wrong cure. It is fast becoming New York's next Big Dig: a $16 billion boondoggle that would drop massive towers in the middle of residential neighborhoods, harm small businesses and schools,"
Rikers Island functions as an outdated, unsafe human-rights failure that must be closed in its present form. The city's borough-based jails plan is years late, billions over budget, and risks placing massive towers in residential neighborhoods while harming small businesses, schools, and community cohesion. Original 2019 projections of $8 billion and closure by 2027 have ballooned dramatically, with major contracts already exceeding $7 billion and projected completion dates slipping into the 2030s; planned capacity also falls far short of recent jail populations. An alternative calls for phased rebuilding of modern, humane facilities on Rikers and converting borough jail sites into affordable housing and mixed-use development.
Read at www.amny.com
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