NYC may blow the 2027 deadline for closing Rikers Island by two years, according to a public notice on a city contract posted Monday.
The notice published in the City Record by the Department of Design and Construction announced a hearing to consider a contract award to the Tutor Perini Corp. for the construction of the new Brooklyn borough jail.
The notice indicates the contract will run for 2,317 days from the date of the notice to proceed — or just over six years — placing the completion date in 2029, two years past the mandated deadline.
Demolition of the old Brooklyn House of Detention on the same 275 Atlantic Ave. site has already been underway.
In 2019, Mayor de Blasio signed a bill passed by the City Council which established that the jails on Rikers Island would be closed by August 2027 and new jails in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Manhattan along with hundreds of new hospital beds would be completed.
“I can’t think of any rationale why they would have a contract that goes two years beyond the deadline if the city wasn’t delaying the jail,” said Zachary Katznelson, policy director of the Independent Commission on New York City Criminal Justice and Incarceration Reform.
“The idea that the boro jails aren’t going to be ready by 2027 is unacceptable. Rikers needs to close. We have a legal deadline of August 2027 to do so. We need to have the jail and hospital beds finished by then. How can it possibly take six years to build a jail?”
The proposed contract is valued in the notice at $2.9 billion paid for by bonds repaid over 30 years. The full plan to close Rikers has been estimated to cost at least $8.5 billion.
“Delaying closure of that dangerous place undermines public safety and puts staff and incarcerated people alike at risk,” said Jonathan Lippman, the former chair of the Close Rikers commission and ex-chief judge of New York State,
“The city must build the secure hospital beds and borough jails that will replace Rikers – and do it…
Read the full article here
Leave a Reply