Copyright citylimits
“The next mayor’s commitment to public safety shouldn’t be measured by how many people they jail, but by how they prevent harm before it happens, and reduce incarceration as a result.” I was 17 when I was sent to Rikers Island in 1997. I witnessed beatings, suicides, and people left untreated in medical distress. That kind of dehumanization never leaves you. Decades later, the same machinery of cruelty still grinds on. Rikers remains torturous—and the crisis of preventable deaths continues to escalate. We are failing our most vulnerable neighbors. I’ve seen people in a psychiatric crisis—yelling, banging their heads on walls to stop the intrusive hallucinations—with no trained staff responding, only corrections officers watching from a distance. We must stop using jail cells—designed for punishment, not healing—as a psychiatric ward. Locking people in crisis inside a system of isolation and trauma only deepens the very cycle of harm we claim to be addressing. The next mayor’s commitment to public safety shouldn’t be measured by how many people they jail, but by how they prevent harm before it happens, and reduce incarceration as a result. New York City spends over a half a million dollars a year to incarcerate one person on Rikers—a cost that produces violence and instability. By contrast, Alternatives to Incarceration (ATIs) are more effective than incarceration at improving employment rates for participants, generating significant savings for taxpayers, and preventing future convictions. Indeed, where at least 35.5 percent of people with mental illness on Rikers will return to Department of Corrections custody within one year of their release, 100 percent of the individuals with serious mental illness and charged with felonies who are enrolled with one city-funded initiative, CASES’ Nathaniel ACT, have no felony convictions two years after program completion. ATIs are not simple hand-outs; they are holistic, trauma-informed interventions designed to provide stability and healing. These community-based programs offer personalized support that addresses the root causes of justice involvement, from addiction and mental health challenges to housing instability and unemployment. Importantly, many of these programs are led by staff with lived experience, which fosters trust and provides authentic insights. By connecting people to essential services—counseling, job training, and safe housing—ATIs create an off-ramp from the criminal legal system that is both cost-effective and proven to reduce crime. This model succeeds precisely because it treats underlying trauma and instability, directly contrasting with the failure of mass incarceration. As a survivor of Rikers who now works to dismantle the systems that uphold it, I can tell you where the real failure lies: we’ve allowed our jail complex to become the city’s largest, most expensive, and most dangerous mental health facility. Today, more than 7,000 people are detained at Rikers, and 90 percent of this population is Black and Latine, cementing the island’s role as a driver of systemic racial injustice. Most are held pretrial—not because they’re guilty of any crime, but because they can’t afford bail. Crucially, many within this population are in desperate need of treatment that they cannot effectively get behind bars: 57 percent have a Brad H mental illness classification, and 21 percent suffer from Serious Mental Illness. This is why we need a mayor who will invest in the proven off-ramps that actually bring the population down instead of just locking people away on an island. We must aggressively combat the faulty, fear-based narrative—pushed by the police commissioner and other defenders of the status quo—that the city must choose between mass incarceration and “doing nothing,” an irresponsible and dangerous choice that actively undermines two decades of reform. The financial case for decarceration is overwhelming, as the massive savings demonstrated by Alternatives to Incarceration are clear. The argument is not just financial—it’s about priorities, and whether we’ll fund the solutions that actually work. ATIs are not the only cost-effective solutions to reduce incarceration and increase community safety. Services like Justice-Involved Supportive Housing (JISH), Intensive Mobile Treatment (IMT) teams, Crisis Respite Centers, and other community-based mental health resources offer healing, stability, and dignity, which are the foundations of true crime prevention. For all of these reasons, a powerful coalition of survivors, advocates, and policymakers came together to create the plan to shutter the island. The next mayor must be a good-faith partner who honors that work, not a political obstructionist who stokes fear to undermine the legal closure timeline. The choice is simple: any candidate who fails to reduce the jail population and close Rikers Island on the fastest possible timeline is choosing fear and failure over genuine reform. The path to a safer, more just New York City requires courage. It requires a mayor who will finally heed the call of survivors and experts, close the gates of Rikers forever, and invest in the off-ramps that allow all our neighbors to be safe and thrive. Jason Rodriguez is a research associate at the Legal Action Center and a survivor of Rikers Island. He works on policy and advocacy with the New York Alternatives to Incarceration and Reentry Coalition.
