As Mayor de Blasio starts his second and last term, New York City has much to be proud of when it comes to criminal justice reform. Since 1996, the city""s crime rate has dropped more than 50%, including 18% just in the last four years, and the jail population has shrunk from more than 20,000 to about 9,500 today.
But a report released last week by Controller Scott Stringer on the astronomically rising costs of city jails tells us there is still much more to be done, especially if we are to close Rikers Island sooner rather than later.
Kalief Browder gave us moral grounds to close Rikers. He was the young man detained for three years there without a conviction, who took his own life after his release.
Stringer provides financial grounds, too. New Yorkers are spending $270,876 per person, or over $2.5 billion annually, to incarcerate some 9,500 people. Most of them are held on a 400-acre island worth billions of dollars.
To say that the economics of Rikers are extremely wasteful is an understatement. There are more humane and cost-effective ways to manage justice-involved people — and better uses for Rikers"" real estate.
The Department of Correction will soon seek proposals to develop new jails in four boroughs so that Rikers may close — and that""s important. But it""s equally if not more urgent to release a request for proposals to engage the private sector to help reimagine and redevelop Rikers Island.
Closing Rikers in the next three to five years and redressing decades of harm will take billions of dollars in new investment in local, rehabilitative jails and community justice centers — funds most feasibly generated through the sale or redevelopment of Rikers Island""s real estate.
That there are smarter, more cost-effective and more humane ways to deal with people in the criminal justice system has already been demonstrated by the mayor""s supervised release program, increased use of community policing as opposed to broken windows or stop-and-frisk, and the City Council""s redirection of some quality-of-life offenses to civil hearings instead of criminal prosecution.
These measures have done much to reduce the number of low-level offenders in city jails. But if we are to reduce the population enough to make the repurposing of Rikers a reality, the mayor, DAs and judges need to get serious about diverting those accused of more serious crimes and those with serious mental illness — because this population is the costliest to incarcerate.
The vast majority of people on Rikers are awaiting trial, and of those, 49% stand accused of a violent felony. Recent data from the Mayor""s Office of Criminal Justice indicates that not all beds at Rikers are created equal when it comes to closing Rikers. To close one bed at Rikers, the city needs to divert 16 misdemeanor detainees or just three violent felony detainees, due to the greater average length of stay for those accused of felonies. Expanding options to safely divert this felony population from jail is necessary to close Rikers.
The commission of a violent felony need not define a person for the rest of his or her life. Almost anyone is capable of lasting change and making real contributions to their communities with the right rehabilitative assistance, or in the case of those with mental illness or substance use disorders, with the right treatment and supports.
Over the last three years, the Greenburger Center has developed a first-of-its-kind voluntary but secure and safe alternative to the incarceration model for those accused of felony level crimes and suffering from serious mental illness and substance use disorders.
Once licensed by New York State, Hope House will provide 25 beds and better results for felony detainees, residents who live in the communities to which these detainees will eventually return, and taxpayers currently footing the bill to keep Rikers open.
With Gov. Cuomo, Mayor de Blasio, the City Council, and leaders from Queens, Brooklyn, and Manhattan on board to close Rikers, the time is right to invest in more diversion programs to reduce the jail population and to put Rikers"" real estate to work to help fund local, state-of-the-art justice centers.
Greenburger is founder and CEO of Time Equities, an international real estate investment and development firm, and founder of the Greenburger Center for Social and Criminal Justice.