WHEN RIKERS GETS FULL, PAY TEXAS TO KEEP THEM IN THEIR COZY JAILS ..... THE COST OF PAYING TEXAS AND TRANSPORTING THE PRISONERS WILL BE LESS THAN THAT OF BUILDING FOUR NEW JAILS

Eric Adams should scrap de Blasio’s replace-Rikers plan 

 

By Nicole Gelinas

 

New York Post

March 7, 2022 

Mayor Adams has faced criticism over continuing his predecessor's plan to build more jails around the city

 

New Lower Manhattan Councilman Christopher Marte bragged to his constituents last week that he’d gotten Mayor Eric Adams to quash the planned jail in his district — and then promptly said he’d been “misunderstood.”

Misunderstood or not, both Marte and Adams know that New York voters don’t want four new jails in four critical districts — and they’ll both have to face re-election on the issue. There’s a better way, both for residents of beleaguered neighborhoods and inmates. 

The four-borough jail project, signed into law by former Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2019, was never going to work. For starters, shoving four high-rise jails into Chinatown, Mott Haven, Kew Gardens and downtown Brooklyn requires that the number of inmates never exceed 3,544. 

That’s not a suggested inmate capacity or an optimal inmate capacity. If the number of people jailed surpasses this figure, there is literally no place to put them. 

Hmm, how many inmates do we have now? As of Monday, 5,679. That’s up 21% from the all-time low of 4,702, in 2020, when the city, trying to stop the spread of COVID, released hundreds of inmates. In 2019, the level was 7,365.

Yes, bail reform, coupled with careful supervised release of people who otherwise would have been at Rikers awaiting trial, was supposed to cut the numbers further. That has not worked out.

Maybe we ought to prove we can get the numbers below 3,544 without the public living in constant fear before we lock in $8.2 billion to build tower jails that will be nonfunctional from Day One.

By the numbers, this plan has already failed on the practical merits — but it also failed to garner community support, as Marte knows. In 2018, all four community boards in areas targeted for jails voted them down.  

Then-Council Speaker Corey Johnson jammed it through, anyway, as there was no jail going in his district.  

This isn’t just NIMBYism. Community boards saw through the nonsense of what the city proposed.  

Jails belong in a nice neighborhood like Kew Gardens, the de Blasio administration said, so that inmates can “integrate” themselves into the community. Hmm, no, not if they’re in jail. 

On the other hand, jails belong in a struggling neighborhood like Mott Haven, the administration said, so that area residents can more easily visit their locked-up relatives. As Arline Parks, an activist local resident, told me in 2019, it is “racist” to assume black men from the neighborhood will continue to go to jail and sends a terrible message to young boys. 

None of this ever added up — and de Blasio left the mess in his successor’s hands. 

Luckily, Adams has a chance to stop it. Despite de Blasio’s best efforts, in his last few days in office, to insist that construction is proceeding, the bid process for would-be builders has been a mess, scrapped and reconfigured several times.  

Already, with construction inflation running 13%, $8.2 billion has become $9.3 billion — and will exceed $10 billion by next year. (According to some estimates, probably more reliable than the city’s, the cost already exceeds $10 billion.) 

Rather than go forward, Adams can pause all this and consider an alternative plan. Last month, a group of independent architects, represented by Bill Bialosky, sent a detailed 63-page proposal to the City Council to build brand-new jails on Rikers.  

Bialosky & Co. agree that the current Rikers buildings are “outdated” and “dehumanizing.” But the island space itself, after environmental remediation, could be home to new campus-style low-rise jails, complete with outdoor space for farming, a family center and room for an academic hub and sports. 

It’s hard to get to and from Rikers? Not really: The city just provides no adequate transportation. Even so, though, it’s a good time to think about transferring some court facilities to Rikers. The island could even house a facility for lawyers and law students. 

In ramming through four-borough jails before the pandemic, de Blasio and the City Council never priced this alternative out. Why not see how much it would cost, compared with four high-rise construction projects in four dense neighborhoods? 

We know what the status quo will cost politically. De Blasio and Margaret Chin, Marte’s predecessor, could sign off on four-borough jails, knowing they couldn’t run for re-election. Neither Adams nor Marte has that luxury.