Making the city’s jails better managed and more humane is a much deeper challenge.
Closing the Rikers jail complex by the deadline required by law less than a year from now is, at this point, essentially impossible. Still, the campaign to shutter the complex initially helped drive the jail population down as the City moved toward a much smaller borough-based system. There are limits, however, to how far incarceration can be reduced, and in recent years the jail population has begun to rise again. Some people will still need to be held in custody, and one less-discussed effect of closing Rikers is that those who remain are increasingly people facing more serious charges and significant mental-health challenges. And now, a new report by the federal monitor finds that longstanding safety and operational problems inside the jail remain unresolved.
Managing that population safely and effectively requires a correctional workforce equipped for those challenges, stronger behavioral-health support both in jail and in the community, and fewer unnecessary case delays that prolong the harms of detention. Getting those pieces right would make custody safer for those detained and those who work there, while giving people a better chance of returning to the community more stable than when they were incarcerated. Unchecked, these issues could undermine the very promise behind closing Rikers: a safer, more humane jail system.
Rikers showcases the challenges of a changing jail population
Recently, in my role as the policy director of criminal justice and civil liberties at the R Street Institute, I had the opportunity to tour Rikers with Department of Correction (DOC) Commissioner Stanley Richards and his team. While there, it was clear why the facilities need to be replaced. Aging buildings, poor sight lines, limited camera coverage, inconsistent air conditioning and the island’s physical isolation are just some of the problems I witnessed.
On the tour, Richards described his vision for new borough-based facilities and what those buildings should include to create a safer and more humane setting. As a former prosecutor and a current policy director of criminal justice and civil liberties, I was impressed by his vision. The City has spent years focusing on reducing the jail population to address mass incarceration and fit the new smaller-scale neighborhood jail model. Reforms have resulted in many lower-level cases increasingly diverted to community-based programs or required to be released pending trial. But as fewer low-risk people enter jail, the population that remains becomes more challenging.
In recent years, more than two-thirds of people in the department’s custody are awaiting trial on violent felony charges, compared with just 36% in 2014. Meanwhile, the share of people needing mental-health services has increased by more than a third in five years, while those with serious mental illnesses rose by nearly 30% over that same period. This means a smaller jail population is not necessarily an easier one to manage.
New York must continue to ask who can safely remain in the community — especially those presumed innocent as they await trial. But even with further reductions in unnecessary detention, some people will need to remain in custody. The City has an obligation to operate a system capable of safely caring for them, supporting the people who work there, and protecting the public. The federal monitoring team has found that minimum-, medium- and maximum-custody units often operate much the same way, even as the changing jail population makes matching housing, staffing, and supervision to risk more important. At roughly $500,000 per person each year, taxpayers continue to pay an extraordinary amount for a system that has struggled to keep people safe inside.
On top of that, court delays are keeping people in custody longer. In 2023, the median felony case in New York City took 375 days from arraignment to disposition. And between 2019 and 2023, felony cases with those in custody that lasted more than three years increased 179%. Those with mental illness tend to spend longer periods of time in pretrial detention than the general jail population. What can be done to manage the changing jail population and reduce delays long after Rikers is closed?
Better recruitment and training
First, the City needs to change who and how DOC recruits and trains.
DOC’s current job posting for correction officers emphasizes searches, orders, disturbances, restraints and “care, custody, [and] control.” How a job is described can influence who applies. Research indicates that job postings focused solely on security and custody have the potential to appeal to those looking for power and control. The job posting also says far less about experience in behavioral health, crisis intervention, case management, or other fields where communication, trust-building, de-escalation and calm judgment under pressure are central to the work. Considering that in fiscal year 2026 approximately 59% of the jail population has a mental illness, the lack of access to adequate support makes these key skills in all staff critical.
If DOC is not consistently recruiting for those skills, then the training officers receive after they are hired becomes even more important. For several years, DOC recruits have received far less than the six months of academy training their counterparts at the NYPD go through. As recently as 2023, they only spent 12 weeks at the academy, and that education was conducted in facilities the department itself considers “outdated and not conducive” to modern correctional training.
To DOC’s credit, its training has since expanded to 17 weeks. It has also begun to add more of the skills training that the job now demands. Recruits now receive instruction in conflict resolution, procedural justice, trauma-informed leadership, and building trust, alongside traditional security and use-of-force training. The department has also resumed crisis-intervention training for officers working in specialized mental-health housing. However, recruitment materials still do little to signal that such skills are valued, and it will take time for the new training to reach the existing workforce. At the end of 2025, only 30% of staff were current on use-of-force refresher training and just 10% on defensive-tactics refresher training. Meanwhile, high-impact force and head strikes continued to be used in circumstances prohibited by policy when lesser force would have sufficed.
DOC should reinforce these skills throughout an officer’s career, from screening to training, retention and promotion. Additional training for supervisors and senior leaders is also necessary, considering the federal monitor’s identification of gaps in operational judgment, oversight, and problem-solving. This especially matters because research on jails shows that perceptions of fair treatment and legitimate authority are strongly associated with compliance — making communication and trust vital tools for achieving security.
Additionally, DOC has to retain the officers who do this work well, which is challenging when they feel disrespected in and outside of work. On the tour, staff described being spit on and having bodily waste thrown at them while doing rounds. They also spoke about members of the public blaming them for the system’s failures, even while they were trying to improve it from within. Richards told the City Council in June, “If we want people to stay, we must create conditions where staff feel supported, safe, respected, and able to build careers in this agency.” That means holding officers accountable when they fall short, but also improving working conditions and supporting officer wellness to keep a strong workforce.
Expanding behavioral-health support
At the same time, the City badly needs to expand treatment capacity both inside and outside the jails. People with serious mental illness and substance-use disorders often face long waits and limited services.
Today, the gap between need and available care is substantial. In June 2026, 40% of 6,259 mental-health clinic appointments were “not seen,” a category that can reflect clinic capacity or escort shortages, as well as unverified patient refusals. Meanwhile, 10 special units under the Program to Accelerate Clinical Effectiveness (PACE), which integrate clinical care in housing for people with serious mental illness, have only about 300 beds.
This is unfortunate, because we saw the promise of an alternative model firsthand when we met staff working in a PACE unit. Their effort to create a more therapeutic environment within the confines of Rikers was impressive. This approach has also produced measurable safety gains after PACE started in 2015. Initially, DOC found that, on average, individuals assigned to PACE units saw a 70% decline in their rate of involvement in uses of force and a 67% decline in their rate of assaults on staff. But with limited beds, many are left without the benefits of the program.
This April, the City opened a 104-bed secure therapeutic unit inside Bellevue Hospital, allowing people with complex medical needs to receive specialty care without the hours-long trip from Rikers. Two future units will add another 236 beds and are expected to focus primarily on people with significant mental-health needs.
That’s all necessary, but it’s not sufficient. Considering the high cost of in-custody options, community-based residential and intensive treatment must be expanded and made easier to access. The programs that do exist have been plagued by extensive waitlists and persistent administrative placement failures.
Shorten unnecessary jail time
Finally, New York needs to address how long people remain in jail waiting for their cases to resolve. This, of course, is largely outside of DOC’s control. Courts, prosecutors, defense attorneys and state laws all influence how long someone remains in jail. New York City already goes to unusual lengths to move criminal cases through the system. It is one of the few jurisdictions with night court arraignments that run seven days a week, and New York’s discovery timelines and requirements are among the most demanding in the country. Speedy discovery ensures the defense promptly receives evidence needed to assess constitutional issues, innocence claims and mitigation that may support earlier release or resolution. There have also been efforts to bring more criminal judges to the city as well as improve case management. Yet some felony cases still take years to resolve.
When delays persist, people — who, let’s remember, are innocent until proven guilty — are kept in an expensive and difficult environment longer. For people with serious mental illness, prolonged stays can also exacerbate psychiatric symptoms. As a Manhattan Supreme Court judge stated: Rikers “is one of the worst places for mentally ill individuals ... for any length of time, let alone a prolonged period.” Bringing case resolution time frames in line with national best practices could also reduce the need for 1,728 jail beds, saving nearly $900 million.
People found incompetent to stand trial can spend months on Rikers waiting for a state psychiatric bed before treatment to restore competency even begins. Recent court cases show that some people have waited considerably longer, even as their criminal cases remained effectively frozen. New York should make greater use of outpatient competency restoration for people who can safely receive treatment in the community. A recent proposal would provide $1.7 million to pilot that approach for 50 to 75 people who might otherwise remain on Rikers waiting for a hospital bed.Years from now, closing Rikers may look like the easy part. New York has replaced failed jail facilities before; Rikers itself was once held up as the modern answer to an older, broken system. Buildings are easier to replace than all the forces that determine who ends up in jail, how long they stay there, and how they are treated there. It may take longer than hoped, but Rikers will eventually close. Then the challenge will be building a jail system that can safely manage those who remain, support the people who work there, and make better use of the extraordinary resources New York already spends on incarceration.
