The population on Rikers Island has risen to 7,067 people this week, the highest total since 2019 — and almost twice as high as the target number needed for the longstanding plan to transfer incarceration operations to four borough-based jails.
Department of Correction officials blame a host of factors: the state prison strike jamming so-called state-ready detainees on Rikers; lack of bed space in mental hospitals; and recent legal changes to court procedures supposedly dragging court cases on for longer periods.
While the penal island has a maximum capacity of at least 10,000 in multiple buildings, the population increase jeopardizes the $16 billion plan to close Rikers jails by 2027 as required by a de Blasio-era law.
The borough-based jail initiative calls for the construction of four smaller detention facilities near courthouses in Brooklyn, The Bronx, Manhattan and Queens, altogether holding 4,160 jail beds, along with 363 hospital beds.
Due to a series of delays, the new jails are not expected to be completed until 2032, according to the most recent timeline based on city contracts. Missing the 2027 deadline would result in court proceedings that could end in fines or orders that people be moved to other jails or released.
The jail population had steadily gone down since former Mayor Michael Bloomberg first took office in 2001. During his three terms, the average city jail population dropped from 14,490 in 2001 to 11,827 in 2013.
The downward trend continued during much of former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s two terms and the jail population fell below 4,000 in April 2020 during the peak of the pandemic.
When Mayor Eric Adams took office in January 2021, the average daily population on the island was 5,700.
The steady rise in that number since the waning months of the de Blasio administration comes as a federal judge overseeing the DOC contemplates whether to appoint a so-called receiver to take over the beleaguered department.
One factor jail officials have failed to discuss: the number of people getting arrested has gone up each year since Adams took office.
An estimated 122,304 people were arrested and prosecuted in 2024, up from 109,965 in 2023 and 92,662 in 2022, according to the New York City Criminal Justice Agency. The number has steadily gone up over the past five years since the pandemic broke out in 2020, the records show.
In order to deal with more people behind bars, the facilities on Rikers are expanding rather than shutting down. Correction officials last week sought special permission from the Board of Correction to increase bed capacity at Otis Bantum Correctional Center (OBCC) dormitories on Rikers from 50 to 60.
The DOC is also adding 72 beds at the West Facility’s annex dormitories by converting small programming rooms in each dormitory to accommodate an additional six beds per unit across 12 housing areas, according to the DOC’s variance request.
Jail officials also plan to use a currently empty housing area dormitory at the North Infirmary Command (NIC) for 28 additional beds. The move is pending approval for use from the State Commission of Correction (SCOC).
“The department is utilizing every tool available to us to ensure we safely create bed space,” DOC Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie wrote to the Board of Correction on Feb. 27.
At a hearing last week, Dr. Robert Cohen, a member of the Board of Correction, the oversight body for the DOC, questioned why the department was looking to add more beds while at the same time moving to close Rikers.
“You clearly have a plan to increase the number of people that are being incarcerated that’s inconsistent with the department’s commitment to reduce the population to be sufficient for the new jails,” he said.
James Conroy, DOC’s deputy commissioner of legal matters, noted the department doesn’t have control over who is detained.
“The people that come into our custody are not at our behest,” he said. “We don’t have control over state courts and who comes into the jails.”
Stuck on the Island
Some of the problem is due to the state prison system blocking the transfer of detainees from city custody as it recovers from a nearly three week strike that resulted in some 2,000 correction officers being fired, according to DOC officials.
There were 344 “state ready” detainees who have been sentenced to more than a year in detention waiting to be shipped to the state’s Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) as of March 11.
“This number will continue to grow until DOCCS begins to accept the new admissions,” Raymond Sanchez, DOC’s assistant Deputy Warden in charge of the custody management centralized movement unit, told the Board of Correction last Tuesday.
Barbed-wire fences surrounded a jail complex on Rivers Island, Dec. 8, 2024. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
Maginley-Liddie has also used her powers as commissioner, via the 6-A program, to release 81 people early since she became head of the department in December 2023.
The program, named after Article 6-A of the State Correction Law, authorizes the commissioner to release people sentenced to less than a year so they can finish their sentences at home.
By contrast, Cynthia Brann, de Blasio’s DOC commissioner during the peak of the pandemic, released nearly 300 people via the 6-A program starting in March 2020.
Approximately 500 people are currently eligible for the early release, according to DOC records.
‘Discovery’ Delays
Most of the people on Rikers have not been convicted of a crime and are awaiting trial, records show.
A new “discovery” law requiring prosecutors to share more information with criminal defendants is also a major contributor to keeping people on the island longer, according to DOC’s Conroy.
“The reality of why the population is increasing is because we have a pre-trial detention population that’s immense,” Conroy said. He said that in the court’s digital record-keeping system, “every single one of the adjournments that you see for most of these individuals — 70% of which are serious violent felony offenses — are because of discovery compliance.”
In January 2020, the state Criminal Procedure Law was changed to speed up timeframes for the sharing of evidence between prosecutors and defense lawyers. The move came after the New York State Legislature passed sweeping reforms to the law following years of complaints from defense attorneys about evidence being withheld until right before trial, or not shared at all.
But prosecutors have struggled to keep up with the new mandates and say cases now take longer to process.
As a result, Gov. Kathy Hochul supports a push to “streamline” the discovery reform legislation.
Public defender organizations are vehemently opposed to any changes.
A two-week strike at upstate prisons has clogged the outflow of people from Rikers. The Green Haven state prison in Dutchess County, Feb. 20, 2025. Credit: Reuven Blau/THE CITY
“If the governor’s proposal to repeal discovery reform is adopted, more New Yorkers will suffer from case delays and be forced to languish on Rikers Island, further exacerbating the already high jail population,” Mary Lynne Werlwas, director of the Prisoners’ Rights Project at the Legal Aid Society, told THE CITY.
The rise in the jail population does not come as a surprise to at least one former top city jail official.
In 2023, former Correction Department commissioner Louis Molina predicted the population would hit 7,000 in 2024.
Molina’s projection was based on an internal seven-page department analysis that begins with a section entitled “Napkin Math for Jail Population Estimation,” THE CITY reported in February 2024.
The document used complex math and cited rollbacks to the state bail reform law and court delays for the projected increase.
Keeping People Out of Jail
Adams frequently talks about the need to catch people “upstream” before they are arrested and entangled in the criminal legal system. He also touts specific drops in crime since he took office in January 2022.
But he rarely talks about how the jail population has gone up from the 5,700 when he was first mayor. He has also frequently questioned the close Rikers plan and last November called for the creation of a specialized mental health facility in the place of one of the four new planned jails.
An estimated 40% of the city jail population has been diagnosed with some type of serious mental illness, according to the Mayor’s Management Report.
“It’s not logical to me to create four smaller Rikers,” Adams told reporters in November 2024. “One of those jails should be a state-of-the-art mental health facility where people can get real care.”
“It is criminal that we are incarcerating people with severe mental health illness,” he added.
But the DOC has not talked with the mayor about creating that type of mental health facility since he brought up the idea with reporters, Maginley-Liddie told the City Council during a budget hearing on March 7.
Meanwhile, at least 127 people found unfit to stand trial by psychiatrists are languishing on Rikers because there is no space at state-run mental health facilities, THE CITY reported last month.
Councilmember Sandy Nurse (D-Brooklyn), chair of the Council’s Committee on Criminal Justice, said the state prison strike blocking new admissions was a new excuse for the Adams administration.
“Those very recent hiccups don’t take away from the overall fact that there hasn’t been the level of resourcing and prioritization into programs that divert people from Rikers or get them off of the island faster,” she told THE CITY.
Department of Correction Commissioner Lynelle Maginley Liddie testifies at a City Council budget hearing, March 7, 2025. Credit: Alex Krales/THE CITY
The Adams administration also got rid of nonprofit groups that helped the formerly incarcerated readjust to life on the outside and instead moved some of its re-entry programming in-house, she noted.
“The use of alternatives to incarceration and detention programs are not being invested in at the level that advocates and service providers say that they need to effectively absorb people and move them into programs,” she said.
Zachary Katznelson, executive director of the new Independent Rikers Commission re-convened by the City Council in 2023, urged Adams, his team and other power brokers involved in the process to take measures to reduce pretrial detention.
More than half of the jail population has a mental illness and 700 people are so severely mentally ill that they cannot comprehend what’s happening in court, he noted.
“It’s clear the Rikers population is significantly higher than it needs to be for public safety,” he said.
On Wednesday, the commission released a report urging City Hall to appoint one person to oversee the Rikers shutdown plan — rather than have the responsibility spread across various officials and agencies.
In order to reduce the jail population, the report suggested that the city expand its pre-trial electronic monitoring capacity, which New York City uses far less than surrounding counties, despite its efficacy.
The city should also boost its supervised release intensive case management pilot citywide “to connect more people with serious mental illness and addiction issues with treatment, housing, and services, ensure they come to court, and head off the commission of more crimes,” according to the report.
The commission also suggested expanding so-called treatment courts for people with serious mental illness and addiction issues.
“Decrepit, dysfunctional and violent, Rikers is a crumbling, inordinately expensive incubator of misery and reoffending,” the 114-page report said. “Every day its eight operating jails are open, incarcerated people and staff are at grave, unnecessary risk, and public safety is degraded.”
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