About

No Brooklyn Jail is a campaign to CLOSE Rikers, STOP new jail construction, and REDIRECT spending towards life-affirming infrastructure. Located at 275 Atlantic Ave on the site of the former Brooklyn House of Detention, the skyscraper jail project is part of the city’s $16 billion borough-based jails plan to replace Rikers with four new jails in Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and the Bronx. We believe that our city should invest in resources that genuinely help our communities thrive, rather than caging New Yorkers for generations to come.

FAQ

Won’t these jails be different than Rikers?

No “redesigned” jail has ever escaped its fate as a jail. Rikers itself was a “reform” of Blackwell’s Island (now Roosevelt Island), and at their core, these facilities still cage and coerce people. They will be managed by the same administration that has fostered the abuse we see at Rikers. Reformed jails (as well as prisons and detention centers) across the country continue to be sites of state-sponsored torture, where people languish waiting for their court dates, medical care, and are warehoused by illegitimate punishment systems. Building new jails is a weak stopgap for a larger, systemic, problem that can only truly be solved by decarceration.

Will these jails at least help close Rikers and reduce the incarcerated population in NYC?

The Brooklyn jail will not be completed until 2029 at the earliest, meaning that the city has already broken its promises to close Rikers by 2027. The other jails won’t be completed until 2032. Historically, every time NYC has built a “better” jail, the incarcerated population has simply continued to increase. Furthermore, the number of people imprisoned inside Rikers are back to highs not seen since 2019. If the purpose of the new jails is decarceration and relief for the cities criminalized communities, why do the numbers of people arrested and detained continue to soar? The new jails will hold 4,160 jail beds (with 1,040 beds in Brooklyn), and rest assured that if they build it, they will fill it.

Isn’t reducing the incarcerated population in NYC unrealistic?

New York City famously cut its imprisoned population by almost half in the 2000s, and during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, successfully reduced numbers inside city jails to 3,928 in 2020 with little impact on arrest rates. In addition, the judicial system has called for the release of pre-trial detainees in the past, the clearest example being 1983 under District Judge Morris Lasker. This demonstrates that there are a number of policies New York City's representatives and the DOC could pursue in order to continue releasing people. True decarceration should be a priority for the city's electeds, moving toward emptying Rikers without creating new correctional capacity.

Who will manage the new jail?

The same NYC Department of Corrections that manages Rikers will manage all the new jails. The NYC DOC is an ungovernable institution that, in response to widespread scrutiny of their operations, has only become more brutal. In addition, the borough based jails plan has effectively given MOCJ, DDC, and the cohort of contractors and architecture firms involved in new jails construction carte-blanche to construct these jails at whatever cost and on whatever timeline, with no real regard for those inside Rikers, nor any accountability for missed deadlines. There is no reason to expect that any new facilities under DOC management will be safer, just because they are 'nicer' places to work inside.