Opinion: The Next Mayor’s Test is Closing Rikers— Public Safety Demands It

The next mayor s commitment to community safety shouldn t be measured by how multiple people they jail but by how they prevent harm before it happens and reduce incarceration as a product A rally calling for the closure of Rikers Island in Gerardo Romo NYC Council Media Unit I was when I was sent to Rikers Island in I witnessed beatings suicides and people left untreated in biological distress That kind of dehumanization never leaves you Decades later the same machinery of cruelty still grinds on Rikers remains torturous and the emergency of preventable deaths continues to escalate We are failing our the greater part vulnerable neighbors I ve seen people in a psychiatric situation yelling banging their heads on walls to stop the intrusive hallucinations with no trained staff responding only corrections officers watching from a distance We must stop using jail cells designed for punishment not healing as a psychiatric ward Locking people in situation inside a system of isolation and trauma only deepens the very cycle of harm we claim to be addressing The next mayor s commitment to constituents safety shouldn t be measured by how multiple people they jail but by how they prevent harm before it happens and reduce incarceration as a effect New York City spends over a half a million dollars a year to incarcerate one person on Rikers a cost that produces violence and instability function d u ac var s d createElement 'script' s type 'text javascript' s src 'https a omappapi com app js api min js' s async true s dataset user u s dataset campaign ac d getElementsByTagName 'head' appendChild s document 'u kmqsczew vunxutxmd' By contrast Alternatives to Incarceration ATIs are more effective than incarceration at improving employment rates for participants generating notable savings for taxpayers and preventing future convictions Indeed where at least percent of people with mental illness on Rikers will return to Department of Corrections custody within one year of their release percent of the individuals with serious mental illness and charged with felonies who are enrolled with one city-funded initiative CASES Nathaniel ACT have no felony convictions two years after initiative completion ATIs are not simple hand-outs they are holistic trauma-informed interventions designed to provide stability and healing These community-based programs offer personalized aid that addresses the root causes of justice involvement from addiction and mental physical condition challenges to housing instability and unemployment Importantly a large number of of these programs are led by staff with lived experience which fosters trust and provides authentic insights By connecting people to essential services counseling job training and safe housing ATIs create an off-ramp from the criminal legal system that is both cost-effective and proven to reduce crime This model succeeds precisely because it treats underlying trauma and instability directly contrasting with the failure of mass incarceration As a survivor of Rikers who now works to dismantle the systems that uphold it I can tell you where the real failure lies we ve allowed our jail complex to become the city s largest most of expensive and majority dangerous mental fitness facility This day more than people are detained at Rikers and percent of this population is Black and Latine cementing the island s role as a driver of systemic racial injustice Majority of are held pretrial not because they re guilty of any crime but because they can t afford bail Crucially multiple within this population are in desperate need of remedy that they cannot effectively get behind bars percent have a Brad H mental illness classification and percent suffer from Serious Mental Illness This is why we need a mayor who will invest in the proven off-ramps that veritably bring the population down instead of just locking people away on an island We must aggressively combat the faulty fear-based narrative pushed by the police commissioner and other defenders of the status quo that the city must choose between mass incarceration and doing nothing an irresponsible and dangerous choice that actively undermines two decades of reorganization The financial matter for decarceration is overwhelming as the massive savings demonstrated by Alternatives to Incarceration are clear The argument is not just financial it s about priorities and whether we ll fund the solutions that indeed work ATIs are not the only cost-effective solutions to reduce incarceration and increase area safety Services like Justice-Involved Supportive Housing JISH Intensive Mobile Restoration IMT teams Dilemma Respite Centers and other community-based mental wellbeing information offer healing stability and dignity which are the foundations of true crime prevention For all of these reasons a powerful coalition of survivors advocates and policymakers came together to create the plan to shutter the island The next mayor must be a good-faith partner who honors that work not a political obstructionist who stokes fear to undermine the legal closure timeline The choice is simple any candidate who fails to reduce the jail population and close Rikers Island on the fastest accomplishable timeline is choosing fear and failure over genuine reorganization The path to a safer more just New York City requires courage It requires a mayor who will eventually heed the call of survivors and experts close the gates of Rikers forever and invest in the off-ramps that allow all our neighbors to be safe and thrive Jason Rodriguez is a research associate at the Legal Action Center and a survivor of Rikers Island He works on strategy and advocacy with the New York Alternatives to Incarceration and Reentry Coalition The post Opinion The Next Mayor s Test is Closing Rikers Populace Safety Demands It appeared first on City Limits