Mayor de Blasio on Friday endorsed the sentiment but not the specifics of the new “Close Rikers” report, and for good reason: It’s an enormous leap.
The plan drawn up by a blue-ribbon panel under former state Chief Judge Jonathan Lippmann rests on some huge assumptions: that the city can cut its jail population in half and build five new facilities (one near each county courthouse) to replace Rikers.
But can the city cut the daily jail numbers from 10,000 in detention to 5,000 — and keep it there? That requires (among other things) changes in state law to drastically ease bail requirements — changes the state Senate’s sure to balk at. (It’s balking at less-dramatic reforms right now.)
And then those reforms have to actually work — to not impact public safety — or the pendulum will swing right back.
It also requires the police to keep on succeeding in driving crime rates down, so that ever-fewer New Yorkers get sent to jail.
This, when many of the same voices who are loudest in demanding that Rikers close are just as adamant that the NYPD abandon the Broken Windows community policing that’s gotten the city this far — driving the jail population down from 20,000 to 10,000 over the last few decades.
If the city closes Rikers, then finds it needs more jail space than the plan projects, it’ll be spending far more than $10 billion to build new facilities (and fighting more community sentiment) than Lippmann and his experts guess.
You see why de Blasio’s support for the plan was paper-thin. The mayor said Rikers “will close” (sure, someday) and the city will need “a few more facilities” to make it happen. Oh, and: “It will take many years, it will take many tough decisions along the way” — with no mention of who will make those decisions, and sell them to all the other decision-makers.
As it is now, Rikers is indeed a horror. But can those who insist that it close manage to open even one new jail by one county courthouse, big enough to take that borough’s full share of the current jail population?
If not, the city should set fantasies aside, and focus on improving what it has now.