The City Council is considering spending $ 1.1 million to a measure destined to accelerate the closure of Rikers Island, an “Eric Adams offer” office criticized as a “redundant bureaucratic measure.”
The new bill, presented on Wednesday by the Committee of the Cresident of Criminal Justice Sandy Nurse, would create a “coordinator office for the closure of the island of Rikers” whose staff would directly inform the mayor.
It would also establish a coordinating role to supervise the transition of the problematic prison system to new blockages based on the municipality.
“As white people continuously suffer and move, the moral imperative of closing Rikers island is still as urgent as ever,” said the nurse, who is also the co -president of the progressive Caucus of the Council, noting that at least the inmates have died.
The legislation was proposed after an independent commission determined last month that the city could not comply with its legally mandatory deadline to close Rikers by 2027.
Judge Jonathan Lippman, who presides over the Rikers Independent Commission published by the 100 -page report, said no one in the city government is coordinating the mass operation between agencies.
“There is no person who does not have a point.
“You need a tsar, someone who does nothing for 24 hours a day, apart from thinking about closing Rikers,” he said.
The Council approved a law in 2019 that establishes the closing deadline for the infamous Lockup, which for years has faced criticism about insecure conditions and overcrowding based on a controversial plan that would go to jail based on four Borough.
Mayor Eric Adams has argued that the deadline cannot be and asked the Council to amend the law.
“While we have always supported the closing of Rikers, we have the clear leg that we can be so idealistic that we are not realistic about the real impacts that a closure of 2027 could have on the public safety of our city,” said Adams.
A City Council spokesman said Wednesday that the new proposed bill would be a “redundant and bureaucratic measure.”
The Adams administration already has personnel members in several city agencies and multiple attached teams of mayors focused on closing Rikers and opening prisons based in the municipality, said the spokesman.
President of the Adraienne Adams City Council, unrelated to the mayor, admitted this month that the jail will not be able to close by 2027.
But Adams, which will do as president of the Council in 2022, has task measures to amend the law that governs the deadline.