Fact Sheet: Our Plan to Close Rikers
Our plan to close Rikers: Decarcerate. Defend. Divest & Re-distribute.
Community Reinvestment is Key to Repairing Harms of Incarceration
City Limits
This week, after a year-long delay, a commission to make recommendations on reinvestment in communities impacted by Rikers Island will convene for its first meeting. The work of this commission is essential and long overdue.Build Communities Platform 2.0
Developed while our staff were at JLUSA. We will continue to advocate for these investments, to make our city one that lives our values of equity and justice by acknowledging the vast resources that decades of mass incarceration have extracted from Black, Brown, and poor communities, and starting today to address that legacy by investing in all of the things we know work to create true safety.
Rikers Public Memory Project
This project is a community-based, participatory initiative through which our collective stories about the impact of Rikers are activated to envision a more just NYC.
Renewable Rikers Plan
A video on a new vision for Renewable Rikers.
Fair Chance for Housing
Housing provides a springboard for success and a crucial foundation for individual and family well-being. Improving access to stable, affordable, and quality housing substantially increases the likelihood that a person leaving prison or jail will be able to connect with new or existing family support, find and retain employment, and build supportive relationships. This, in turn, strengthens our communities.
Gang Takedowns In the De Blasio Era: The Dangers of ‘Precision Policing’
New York City is making a dangerous and counterproductive mistake in using “gang suppression” techniques to manage the problems of youth violence. Gang suppression policies wrongly assume that deterrence and incapacitation are the only ways to reduce violence.
A Blueprint for Ending Solitary Confinement in NYC Jails
This document contains a blueprint for how New York City can and must end solitary confinement in all its forms throughout its jails. This blueprint reflects the experiences and expertise of people who have endured solitary, family members of people incarcerated, mental health, legal, and human rights experts, and other members of the Jails Action Coalition and the #HALTsolitary campaign.
Less Is More NY: Advancing Solutions to the Problem of Re-incarceration for Technical Violations of Parole
The Less isMore: Community Supervision Revocation Reform Act would fix this problem. Developed by people on parole, people currently incarcerated, family members, Katal, Unchained, Justice Lab at Columbia, Legal Aid, and more, the bill is sponsored by Sen. Brian Benjamin (S.1343C) and Assm. Walter Mosley (A.5493B).
Closing Rikers Context: Making Sense of the Fight over NYC Jails
The city’s jail population has been steadily declining for the past 20 years. As of last month, just more than 7,000 people were detained in NYC jails on any given day. We must address two central questions immediately: First, once Rikers is closed, what will the City’s maximum detention capacity be? Second, what will the City do with people who are detained: Where will they be held and, crucially, in what kind of conditions?
