Activists Roar As NYC Planning Commission OKs New Jails

NEW YORK — Prison abolition activists roared Tuesday as the New York City Planning Commission approved plans for four new jails meant to replace Rikers Island. Protesters opposed to the proposal shouted over the commissioners as they explained their votes, sometimes rendering them inaudible.

The commission members delivered their prepared remarks undeterred before sending Mayor Bill de Blasio's proposal to the City Council, seeming to ignore the protesters from the No New Jails NYC coalition.

"Blood on your hands!" at least two dozen activists chanted after Commission Chair Marisa Lago closed the brief meeting, held in a basement room in Lower Manhattan.

"The plan itself has nothing to do with closing Rikers Island," said Brittany Williams, a No New Jails activist from Sunset Park. "It's about expanding the jail capacity, the carcereal state in New York City."

The modified plan spearheaded by the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice calls for building a new lockup in every borough but Staten Island by 2026 to replace the Rikers Island complex, which is notorious for violence and poor conditions. The council will hold its first hearing on the proposal Thursday morning before eventually taking a final vote.

The de Blasio administration expects the jails to hold a total of 4,000 people. That estimate has decreased from about 5,000 when the plans were first unveiled in August 2018. City officials attribute the drop to statewide bail reforms that will take effect next year.

Lago called the plan "among the most consequential applications" to ever come before the planning commission. While three members voted against it, commissioners generally praised the city's objective of creating a more humane jail system.

"Today's vote is so much more than a vote on site selections and special permits," Lago said as protesters shouted. "It's a vote to end a bleak era in New York City's criminal justice history."

But anti-jail activists said the city's land-use review process has not sufficiently addressed community concerns. While city officials have presented the plans to the public in several arenas, the planning commission held just one formal hearing on them, and de Blasio's office has barred the press from certain meetings.

Elected officials and local advocates urged the council to scrutinize the plan more closely. Community boards in all four boroughs have voted against the proposal, raising concerns about the size of the jails and the top-down way in which the city has ushered them through the public review process.

"The City Planning Commission's approval of this plan is just the latest despicable chapter in a land use process rigged by the City," said Arline Parks, the CEO of the Diego Beekman Mutual Housing Association, a nonprofit that has proposed residential development for the Mott Haven jail site. "Now the City Council must do what's right and stop this unjust plan to build a massive jail in a low-income community of color."

The new jails in Lower Manhattan, Downtown Brooklyn, Kew Gardens and Mott Haven would range in height from 245 to 450 feet. The need for fewer beds led city officials to reduce the planned square footage by varying amounts at each facility, according to an Aug. 12 letter from the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice.

No New Jails activists objected that the proposal does not include a legally binding commitment to close Rikers. While city officials say the lockups will better serve incarcerated people, opponents worry that they would replicate the same deplorable conditions that have long plagued the existing jail complex.

The city should spend 10 years exploring alternatives to incarceration instead of building new jails that will continue to endanger New Yorkers, Williams said.

But to Darren Mack, who spent 19 months on Rikers in the early 1990s, Rikers's continued existence is too urgent a "human rights crisis" to wait for other solutions. Building new jails and shuttering Rikers is a viable, strategic step toward decarcerating the city, he said.

"We can’t wait 10 years for the possibility of people not going into the system," said Mack, the director of community engagement and advocacy at the criminal justice reform group JustLeadershipUSA. "This plan has a specific timeline and if there’s a plan better than that, I would support it, but it doesn’t exist."

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the number of people the new jails were originally expected to house. It was 5,000, not 6,000, which is the total number of beds called for in the initial plans.