By Michele Evans / NYweeklyRecord.com / Date: 11/9/2026
Category: Rikers Island / Corrections / Justice Reform / Accountability
NEW YORK CITY, NY – New York City’s overdue plan to close Rikers Island has reached another budget test. More than 70 criminal justice, legal and social-service organizations are urging Mayor Zohran Mamdani to finance housing, treatment, diversion and reentry programs before the city releases its November financial plan.
The coalition says the city cannot wait for new borough jails to solve a population problem that exists now. Rikers held about 6,661 people at the start of November, according to the Queens Daily Eagle. The four planned borough facilities are designed for no more than 4,400 people and are not expected to be completed until at least 2032.
City law still requires the Rikers complex to close by August 2027. Officials have acknowledged that deadline will be missed. That leaves a stark accountability question: what will the administration fund now to reduce the number of New Yorkers sent to the island while construction remains years behind?
The Close Rikers Campaign asked for at least $20 million to create 650 supportive-housing units for justice-involved people with mental-health diagnoses. It also sought $10 million for alternatives to incarceration, $10 million for reentry services, $1.7 million for an outpatient competency-restoration pilot and $3.5 million for four additional crisis respite centers.
Those proposals target the systems that can determine whether a person remains in the community, waits in jail for a court case or leaves custody without stable housing and care. Vera Institute research published in September found that roughly 60 percent of people held at Rikers needed mental-health services by 2025, while the jail system had far fewer specialized beds than people diagnosed with serious mental illness.
The campaign also proposed removing more than 770 unfilled uniformed correction-officer positions from the Department of Correction budget and redirecting some of that money. That request does not itself move money. The mayor and City Council must decide whether the November plan will fund the services and whether any DOC savings are real and recurring.
City Hall told the Queens Daily Eagle it would review the proposals. A mayoral spokesperson said the administration is working to improve jail conditions, meet its obligation to close Rikers and move toward a borough-based system as quickly as possible.
The city has taken some steps, including closing unused Rikers facilities and opening a secure hospital unit for people with serious physical illnesses. The jail population, however, was reported to be nearly unchanged from a year earlier. That gap between policy announcements and the head count is what the budget must confront.
The Commission on Community Reinvestment and the Closure of Rikers Island will hold a public hearing on Nov. 17. Under the 2019 law that created it, the commission is supposed to gather input from impacted communities and recommend how savings from the closure should be reinvested. The mayor is required to respond to its recommendations.
For families with loved ones awaiting trial, the issue is not an abstract construction schedule. It is whether housing, treatment and court-based alternatives exist before another person is sent to a jail system the city has promised to leave behind.
The November financial plan will show whether the administration treats those services as core closure infrastructure or another item that can wait. The deadline has already slipped. The next test is whether the money follows the promise.
Sources
Queens Daily Eagle: Advocates push Mamdani to boost funding for Rikers closure efforts
Vera Institute: Rikers Was Never Meant to Be a Mental Health Clinic
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