Rikers Island should be shut down by 2027, in accordance with a metropolis legislation enacted throughout the de Blasio Adminstration in 2019. Nonetheless, these operating this November to be the following NYC mayor aren’t so positive that deadline might be met.
The 4 mayoral candidates expressed concern over Rikers Island, but additionally doubted its skill to meet the closure mandate due in 2027, about 18 months after the brand new time period begins on Jan. 1, 2026. All however one among them suppose the correctional facility ought to be completely shuttered; Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa stated he would search to maintain it open and problem the legislation requiring its closure.
A metropolis legislation mandates closing Rikers Island by 2027 and changing the penitentiary with 4 smaller, borough-based jails, though it’s not clear whether or not that can happen. The group jail plan has been met with heavy resistance from native residents, and simply two of the websites are presently below building.
In the meantime, the following mayor’s skill to handle Rikers Island might be below much more scrutiny than their predecessors.
That’s as a result of Rikers Island has been positioned below federal receivership below the order of Decide Laura Taylor Swain, who held town in contempt for violence and circumstances on Rikers Island — particularly “the ongoing violations of the constitutional rights of people in custody in the New York City jails.”
Swain will quickly appoint a “remediation manager” to make sure that the violations are corrected to the courtroom’s satisfaction, making the Division of Correction (DOC), which operates Rikers, immediately accountable to them.
And as Rikers Island’s future stays very a lot unsure, inmates on the facility are dying at an alarming clip. The Correction Division reported 12 in-custody deaths thus far in 2025, nearly all of them inside Rikers. The string of deaths has raised additional issues about circumstances on the island, elevated anger amongst advocates who need Rikers closed for good, and made the way forward for the power and insurance policies for detaining suspected criminals an much more vital matter within the 2025 NYC mayor’s race.
Right here’s the place every of the candidates stands on Rikers Island’s future.
Zohran Mamdani
New York Metropolis mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani speaks to the media throughout a marketing campaign cease with Speaker of the New York State Meeting Carl Heastie within the Bronx borough of New York Metropolis, U.S., September 17, 2025. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
The Mamdani marketing campaign stated “Rikers Island’s decades-long history of abuse, neglect and suffering has no place in New York City.”
“As Mayor, Zohran Mamdani will work to adhere to the 2027 closure of Rikers as required by law, a commitment the Adams administration has abandoned and set back by years,” the marketing campaign stated.
Mamdani, the Democratic nominee and present frontrunner within the race, spoke extra at size at Columbia College on Sept. 8 about what he perceives to be issues at Rikers and attainable options.
“The despair on Rikers Island has been well known to many of us for quite some time,” he advised the Columbia Journalism Faculty. “And yet it is despair that has only been heightened under this current administration.”
Mamdani stated the Rikers jail inhabitants has elevated by greater than 1,000 since Mayor Adams took workplace and that it may very well be lowered to lower than 4,000 and as little as 3,700.
He additionally stated at Columbia that, after delays and a scarcity of motion, it’s “functionally impossible” to shut it by 2027.
“There’s a question of will,” Mamdani stated. “Do you actually want to do this or are you just pushing the can down the road?”
He stated the typical keep in Rikers has elevated from 50 days within the Nineteen Nineties to greater than 100 days and known as for fast trials and courtroom reforms.
His marketing campaign additionally cited a have to crack down on the human rights abuses happening there, comparable to deadlocking during which inmates are locked of their cells for weeks, in addition to sexual assault and extreme use of power.
“No longer can we just be at ease with Rikers Island being the largest mental health facility in New York City,” Mamdani stated, saying that 40% of these launched from New York Metropolis jails enter shelters.
Eric Adams
Mayor Eric Adams on a tour of Rikers Island in June 2022.NYC Mayoral Pictures Unit
“When you stand for and believe that you should remove 3,000 people from Rikers Island, who are some of the most dangerous people in our city, they’re going to go back to the communities that they preyed on in the first place,” stated Adams, a Democrat now in search of re-election as an impartial candidate.
In 2021, whereas campaigning to turn into town’s subsequent mayor, Adams expressed help for closing Rikers. Nonetheless, whereas mayor a 12 months later, he expressed doubt that town may meet the mandated 2027 closure deadline due to the big numbers of violent criminals incarcerated there.
The following 12 months, 2023, he known as upon the Metropolis Council to revisit the closure plan altogether, noting the elevated inhabitants on the facility. The inhabitants rose from 5,700 when Adams took workplace to greater than 7,000 inmates right this moment.
On the identical time, the DOC has reported at the least 45 in-custody deaths on Rikers Island since 2022.
When Rikers formally fell into federal receivership in Could, the mayor stated that “the problems on Rikers are decades in the making” and didn’t start along with his administration.
Adams blamed the Rikers Island closure plan, which the Metropolis Council after which Mayor Invoice de Blasio’s administration permitted in 2019, for allegedly stopping town from investing in capital enhancements there.
In 2022, the Adams administration and the present federal Rikers Island monitor, Steve Martin, agreed on an motion plan to enhance circumstances. The plan promised what the administration known as on the time “meaningful reform” on the jail, together with efforts to cut back violence and enhance staffing.
Whereas acknowledging that Correction Commissioner Lynette Maginley-Liddle has been “working collaboratively with the monitor to move the agency forward and committed to reform” lately, her actions alone weren’t sufficient for Swain to “to tip this factor against the appointment of a receiver.”
Adams has additionally sought to reopen ICE’s workplace on Rikers Island in cooperation with the Trump Justice Division by way of government order. Nonetheless, that order was overturned after the Metropolis Council challenged it.
Andrew Cuomo
Former Gov. Andrew CuomoREUTERS/Adam Grey
A spokesman for former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, operating as an impartial after dropping the Democratic major in June to Mamdani, stated he “has sought the closing of Rikers for more than a decade.”
“The current plan has been mismanaged and dragged down by incompetence,” the spokesman stated. “There’s no way those jails are going to be completed by 2027, and everyone needs to go back to the drawing board with a real plan that has to be managed.”
Focusing a lot of his consideration on the destiny of mentally-ill inmates, in June, Cuomo stated he would relocate folks with severe psychological sickness from Rikers Island to supportive housing inside the first 30 days of his administration.
Cuomo, on the time, known as the troubled jail complicated “an absurd disgrace and abuse of taxpayers” and vowed to maneuver non-violent detainees with important psychological well being wants into community-based group houses and remedy amenities. He didn’t specify how many individuals would qualify or define logistics past the 30-day timeframe.
Below his proposal, solely people who aren’t charged with violent crimes and aren’t thought of a hazard to others can be eligible for switch.
In March, a report by the Impartial Rikers Fee discovered that of the 6,800 inmates, 57% of the jail inhabitants has a psychological sickness, together with 83% of ladies. Round 1,400 detainees, or 21%, are categorised as having a severe psychological sickness.
Curtis Sliwa
Republican mayoral nominee Curtis Sliwa talking in Union Sq. on Sept. 19, 2025.Picture by Jonathan Portee
Sliwa stated he would preserve Rikers open, however that it must be tailored.
“I want it to be rehabbed and redeveloped,” Sliwa stated, “both the occupied buildings and the empty ones.”
Sliwa stated a few of these at the moment being held there with psychological well being points will be put in a specialised unit “where they can get the care and attention that their mental health demands before they get released back into the community.”
“I would challenge the 2027 deadline in court,” Sliwa added. “I am opposed to the community jails, which are a waste of money and resources.”
He stated that cash may very well be higher used “for affordable housing,” including {that a} community-based jail plan initially set to price $8 billion now’s set to price $16 billion.
