NYC Jail Population Will Drop To 3,300, City Now Projects

NEW YORK — The number of people in New York City's jails will drop to 3,300 by the time Rikers Island closes in 2026, city officials announced Monday.

Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration revised its projection downward from 4,000 ahead of Thursday's key City Council vote on plans for four new lockups meant to replace the notorious jail complex.

The new number — which will give New York the lowest jail population rate of any large United States city — will mean the jails in each borough but Staten Island will each house fewer than 1,000 people on a given day, less than half the number in Rikers's largest jail, according to the mayor's office.

"Mass incarceration did not begin in New York City, but it will end here," de Blasio, a Democrat, said in a statement. "With the lowest rate of incarceration of any major city, we are proving you don’t need to arrest your way to safety."

The de Blasio administration initially planned to drive the jail population down to 5,000 people to close Rikers by 2027. But new statewide reforms and the city's ongoing efforts to put fewer people behind bars have accelerated the timeline and the population shrinkage, officials say.

The city plans to expand its supervised release program to reduce the number of people locked up while awaiting trial, officials said. The new population estimate also accounts for new state laws that will end cash bail for nonviolent offenders starting in January.

The council is slated to vote Thursday on the proposal to build new, smaller jails in Lower Manhattan, Downtown Brooklyn, Kew Gardens and Mott Haven, along with a measure that will ban jails from operating on Rikers after 2026.

The proposed jails currently range in height from 245 to 450 feet, but the city is talking with the council about how the smaller population could affect those heights, said B. Colby Hamilton, a spokesperson for the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice.

"The City is currently in discussions with the Council about the impact the latest projections will have on a host of items," Hamilton said in an email. "... Any changes to the proposed heights in the plan will come from the Council at this stage."

The plans appear likely to win approval despite vocal opposition from prison-abolition activists and community leaders across the city. Council Speaker Corey Johnson has expressed support for them, and de Blasio's Monday press release about the population estimate contained supportive statements from the four lawmakers whose districts contain the new jail sites.

No New Jails NYC, a coalition of decarceration activists, has steadfastly opposed plans for new jails even as the number of people expected to be locked up has dropped. Its members argue the city should invest in housing, education and other services instead of jails, which they say will replicate Rikers's deplorable conditions.

"We are here and we are letting it be known to our council members that if they approve wasting $11 billion into cages, we will make sure they will not be re-elected into office ever again," Lisa Ortega, an organizer with Take Back the Bronx, said in a statement Saturday. (The city has said the jail plan will cost $8.7 billion.)