Mayor de Blasio’s administration is looking to hire a consultant to study spots for new and expanded jails, a first step in shutting down violence-plagued Rikers Island.
De Blasio has pledged to close Rikers within the next decade.
The city put out a request for proposals Thursday looking for a firm to figure out how much space for additional prisoners is available at existing jails in Manhattan and Brooklyn and a shuttered jail in Queens, and whether those sites could be expanded.
They’d also suggest sites for new, smaller jails, where they’d propose potential building designs and programs for prisoners.
“We have a moral obligation to close down Rikers Island and transition to a smaller, safer and fairer jail system. To make that a reality, we’ll be looking at where we can create more off-island space by expanding existing buildings or finding new sites,” de Blasio said in a statement. “We’re moving aggressively on the long road to closing Rikers Island, and this is a crucial step forward.”
Closing Rikers will require cutting the city’s inmate population almost in half, to 5,000 from around 9,200 today.
A commission that recommended closing Rikers proposed jails in each borough near their courthouses, but de Blasio declined to embrace that plan. He has said there won’t be a jail on Staten Island, though the RFP does not specify that.
Proposals will be due in December and the city expects to pick a consultant early next year.
Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito said Thursday she thought Rikers should be closed faster than de Blasio has proposed.
“I don’t believe 10 years is the right timeline,” she said, noting Council members for courthouse sites in four boroughs have said they’d back a jail.
Glenn Martin, founder of #CloseRikers, said his organization is “encouraged that the City has taken the first step in that process by issuing requests for proposal in the hopes of finding a partner who can offer an initial assessment of these existing facilities,” but “for this process to be meaningful, anyone partnering with the City must recognize the urgency of the emergency at Torture Island and must act expeditiously. Step one is important, but one step in what could be a 10-year journey is not good enough. We cannot wait 10 years to close Rikers. Ten years is still too long.”
