One of the four jails under construction to replace Rikers Island will have additional beds to accommodate the city’s growing detainee population, officials revealed this week. But to make room for the extra beds, a unit intended to help those with mental illness and addiction issues will be downsized.
The $3 billion Brooklyn jail will now have 1,040 beds, up from 886, according to a PowerPoint presentation released Wednesday. The jail cannot grow in physical size, per zoning law, so to pack in more detainees, the city will reduce the number of “therapeutic beds” intended for people with mental illness and those with substance abuse disorders. Those specialized units are more spacious and were designed to be on one tier, to reduce the risk of suicides; the new plans call for two tiers.
Despite the city’s plans, the percentage of people diagnosed with mental illness who are detained has steadily increased in recent years and is now at 53%, according to city data. Most of the record 19 deaths in city custody last year were due to suicide or drug overdoses; in May, Rubu Zhao died by suicide after jumping off a second-level tier.
Meanwhile, the jail population has sharply increased under Mayor Eric Adams, who has prioritized arrests to reduce crime. There are now more than 6,000 people in city custody, but the four new planned jails —which by law must replace Rikers in 2027 — were only designed to hold 3,300 people. Adams has said the city will need a “plan B” to accommodate what his administration projects will grow to 7,000 incarcerated people by next year.
Increasing the headcount at the new Brooklyn jail — which will rise on the site of the old Brooklyn House of Detention on Atlantic Avenue — appears to be part of that “plan b.” It is unclear if the jail projects in Queens, Manhattan and the Bronx — which are at various stages of the design and construction process —will be similarly affected. Spokespeople for the mayor, Department of…
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