NYC to Close One Jail on Rikers Island This Summer

First Rikers Island jail to close in summer as part of city’s 10-year plan to shut down the complex

Mayor de Blasio’s plan to close Rikers Island will break ground this summer at the George Motchan Detention Center. Officials working with Mayor said GMDC was chosen as the first due to structural reasons.

The Rikers Island jail population takes up the lion’s share of the citywide jail population-roughly 7,000 to the city’s almost 9,000. The Mayor had little to say about how a large spike in violence in 2017 ran concurrent to the downsizing. Closing the jail would create astronomical problems for inmates and CO’s alike, and already has.

In a statement from our partner, Sean Riordan, Esq., “In the Mayor’s continual attempt to close Rikers Island he has announced the pending closure of GMDC. This closure can only be viewed as creating a greater risk to the personal safety of Correction Officers throughout Rikers Island. As attacks on officers have risen drastically in 2017, further crowding of existing facilities will create untold dangers for officers in 2018 and beyond. The “re-thinking” of the city’s jail system should not be done at the expense of officer safety.”

“With vicious assaults on correction officers occurring nearly every week, along with a near 30% increase in inmate-on-inmate slashings and stabbings department-wide, we had hoped Mayor de Blasio would have announced a plan today to make the jails safer,” said Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association President Elias Husamudeen.”, quoted from NY Daily News.