A blue-ribbon panel led by former New York state Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman will recommend closing Rikers Island — and potentially replacing it with a series of new jails spread across the city’s five boroughs, The Post has learned.
The 10-year plan also calls for slashing Rikers’ population by putting hordes of jailbirds back on the streets under “supervised release,” a source familiar with the commission’s work said Thursday.
The violence-plagued correction complex is currently home to around 10,000 inmates, about 80 percent of whom are locked up awaiting trial.
Lippman plans to release a report with the recommendations Sunday, the source said.
The Post spotted Lippman entering City Hall early Thursday evening, and he spent about 90 minutes meeting with both Mayor Bill de Blasio and City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito.
When asked for comment before the sit-down, Lippman said: “We’re close. We’re keeping everybody informed, taking feedback and we’re almost ready. Soon. Once we have a report, you’ll get the report. Soon. We’re very close.”
But panel member Herbert Sturz, chairman of the Center for New York City Neighborhoods, confirmed that “the report will support the closing of Rikers.”
“Some of the people there will be on supervised release,” said Sturz, a former deputy mayor and Planning Commission chairman under then-Mayor Edward Koch.
“We want to make the bail system fair.”
Lippman convened his Independent Commission on New York City Criminal Justice and Incarceration Reform last year at the request of Mark-Viverito, who has called for Rikers to be shut down, a position endorsed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo.Earlier last year, de Blasio publicly rejected the idea of closing Rikers, calling it a “noble concept” but saying it would cost “billions and billions of dollars” and leave the city with nowhere to lock up its hordes of jailbirds.
Both de Blasio and Mark-Viverito are expected to back the panel’s recommendations, according to a City Hall source.
The commission hired two teams of consultants to draw up plans to transform Rikers, according to sources familiar with their work.
One team, from HR&A Advisors, has been developing a proposal that includes replacing the jail complex with a third runway for La Guardia Airport, a sewage treatment plant and a garbage transfer station, the source said.
That team was told to clear their calendars for Sunday, the source said.
The other consultants are identifying potential locations for new jails that would distribute the inmates evenly across the boroughs, the source said.
Pursuing that plan would be politically perilous, as shown by the fate of former Staten Island Borough President Ralph Lamberti, who cut a failed deal to put a jail in the Rossville neighborhood in exchange for the closure of homeless shelters.
Lamberti, a Democrat, was ousted in 1989 by Republican Guy Molinari, who pounded him on the issue.
De Blasio, Mark-Viverito and Lippman all declined comment following their meeting.
Additional reporting by Aaron Short and Bruce Golding