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Unlike his two predecessors, Mayor Zohran Mamdani has no hope of avoiding a hard time with the Rikers Island jails: He faces dual crises with the implosion of the de Blasio “replacement” plan and the coming imposition of a federal overseer.
City law calls for the entire complex to close in 2027, but state law says it can’t shut down until replacement space is built — yet the first of four new jails now isn’t set to finish before 2029, the last in 2032, and all of them together won’t have enough beds to make up for the loss of Rikers’ current 15,000-detainee capacity.
Meanwhile, federal Judge Laura Swain is (ever so slowly) moving to impose a “remediation manager” to reduce violence and improve conditions at the jails pursuant to the 2015 consent decree in the Nunez case.
That’s right: City government committed to fixing Rikers back when Barack Obama was president, yet the jails have only grown more violent in the decade since, while the federal monitor — a team of highly paid experts who’ve billed taxpayers $22 million just since 2024 — has issued four dozen highly critical reports that never bring lasting improvement.
The left-wing “decarceral” movement wants as few criminals jailed or imprisoned as possible; Mayor Bill de Blasio heeded it in signing off on the “replace Rikers” plan that aimed to permanently reduce the city’s jail capacity even as he ignored the nightmarish conditions on the island.
Mayor Eric Adams attempted reforms and called out the failure of the replacement plan, but had no success in getting the rest of the political establishment to face facts.
Mamdani has mouthed the “decarceral” line for his entire (brief) career in politics, but as mayor has plainly begun to realize that ideology alone has no practical answers — and that soaring crime could make it impossible for him to pursue his own ambitious agenda.
That’s likely why he has yet to name a Correction commissioner: His team first must figure out how they’ll juggle all these hot potatoes, which also include a correction-officer union that’s been struggling to sort out its own issues ever since its then-chief was convicted of corruption back in 2016.
Judge Swain has been extremely reluctant to push; even now, she’s looking to appoint a federal overseer who’ll work in concert with City Hall to improve conditions.
Mamdani inherits a jails complex with a pervasive culture of dysfunction, mismanagement and violence; inmate deaths from overdoses, suicide and other avoidable causes now occur with regularity.
Swain seems content to twiddle her thumbs rather than force any issue, and the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District has failed to push her to get serious.
The Post has long called for a full federal takeover, as nothing less holds much hope of working.
The new mayor might just want to join us in that call, in hopes of honorably getting the whole intractable mess off his plate.