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Last Friday, Mayor Bill de Blasio and City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito held a joint press conference to announce a plan to close Rikers Island in the next 10 years. The jail has long been a symbol for the inherent problems within the criminal justice system, not only in New York but in the country as a whole. The announcement raised a lot of questions as to where the city will house jail inmates, and what will happen to the 400-plus acres of land on the island.
A new report from the Independent Commission on New York City Criminal Justice and Incarceration Reform aims to answer those questions, albeit in a speculative fashion. The commission posits that if the jail is closed on Rikers, the most logical replacement would be an expansion to LaGuardia Airport.
"The Island is uniquely positioned to accommodate an expanded LaGuardia Airport that would reduce delays and could serve as many as 12 million more passengers annually," the report says. With buildings near the airport capped at 150 feet and Rikers's proximity to it, the expansion certainly makes sense.
The idea would be to add a third runway on the northern end of Rikers, construct a new modern terminal and build new taxiways on overwater platforms. The image above shows the proposed new terminal in the foreground, and the concept for a new runway in the background. The report estimates that swapping out the jail for an airport expansion would generate up to $7.5 billion of annual economic activity and more than 50,000 jobs.
But finding a replacement for the jail on Rikers Island is one thing—closing it and finding a place to house the thousands of inmates there is another. In order to move inmates off of the island, the report lays out six borough-based jails that are located near courthouses. In order for this plan to work, New York City's overall jail population would have to be reduced to 5,000 from the 9,500 currently in custody.
Big changes for Rikers Island have been proposed in the past, but the commission's plan has the backing of some of the biggest movers and shakers in New York. Whether or not it gets implemented remains to be seen—at the very least it's great campaign fodder for de Blasio, who's seeking reelection this Fall.