Inside the Battle to Close Rikers
Feature | Filed 10:00 a.m. 03.22.2018
One evening last fall, Dana Kaplan, a deputy director at the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, in New York City, stood in a cavernous foyer in a Bronx courthouse to tell residents about a new jail that would be built in the borough. It was part of a 10-year plan, announced by Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2017, to close the complex of eight jails on Rikers Island and build four smaller facilities in locations around the city. There are currently about 8,000 people held in the city’s jails, down from more than 20,000 in the early 1990s, and de Blasio’s plan aims to reduce that number to 5,000. Kaplan’s job includes shepherding the initiative at the community level—partly by highlighting that the new sites would allow the incarcerated to remain closer to both local courts and their families. Standing before images of spacious visiting rooms with high-windowed views of verdant trees, Kaplan explained to the crowd that the goal is to construct “safe and efficient facilities that complement the neighborhood.”
Her voice barely penetrated the chants, boos and jeers. Later in the evening, residents took turns at a microphone, berating Kaplan and the other city officials. They had to shout to be heard, with only occasional phrases—“no new jails,” “a form of genocide”—emerging from the clamor. After the event, Kaplan, who spent many years as an advocate fighting to end mass incarceration, told me that she used to be “in that crowd.” A few years ago, inspired by de Blasio’s rhetoric on race and criminal justice (while running for office, for instance, he
