FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, April 7th, 2026
Contact: Yonah Zeitz: yonah@katalcenter.org • 347-201-2769
Follow on socials @KatalCenter • #ShutRikers #CutShutInvestNY
Mayor Mamdani Opens the Long-Delayed Hospital-Based Therapeutic Beds at Bellevue and Plans to Close the North Infirmiary Command on Rikers Island
To Advance the Closure of Rikers, the Mayor Must Continue Opening the Promised Off-Jail Hospital Beds and Pass a City Budget that Decreases the City’s Jail Population
New York, Today, Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced the opening of 104 hospital-based therapeutic beds at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan. As part of the 2019 plan to close Rikers, the City committed to building three off-jail therapeutic facilities at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan, Woodhull Hospital in Brooklyn, and North Central Bronx Hospital. The current city plan is for these three facilities to house a combined capacity of 350 people experiencing serious medical and mental health conditions.
The facility at Bellevue was supposed to open in 2022, but was heavily delayed by the previous mayoral administration. The Woodhull and North Central Bronx facilities are not expected to open until 2028. As a part of this announcement, the Mamdani administration will also close the North Infirmary Command, which has a history of deplorable conditions and placing incarcerated people in conditions that equate to solitary confinement.
In our November 2025 report, “Rikers Island and Mental Health” with the Data Collaborative for Justice at John Jay, we called on the city to promptly bring these promised off-jail hospital beds online. Rikers currently serves as the largest mental health facility in New York, and incarcerated people are regularly denied access to quality care.
Last month, in the span of a week, two people died while in DOC custody due to medical emergencies. These deaths occurred while the Mamdani administration’s FY 2027 budget proposal increases the DOC budget by 5 percent, while failing to increase investments in proven solutions to safely reduce the jail population, such as ATI’s, supervised release, JISH housing, IMT, FACT teams, and B-HEARD mental health responses.
Statement from Yonah Zeitz, advocacy director of the Katal Center for Equity, Health, and Justice: “Mayor Mamdani’s opening of the hospital-based therapeutic beds at Bellevue is a critical step to getting incarcerated people the care they deserve, stopping preventable deaths, and advancing the closure of Rikers. Rikers is dangerous and deadly, and it is the last place people in need of serious care should be. The previous administration shamefully failed to staff and operationalize this long-overdue facility, and incarcerated people bore the cost of their indifference. The two deaths at Rikers last month due to medical emergencies underscore the dire conditions at Rikers and the need for incarcerated people to receive adequate care.
We’re also glad to see the Mamdani Administration planning to close the North Infirmary Command at Rikers, which has long been a sight of neglect, abuse, and isolation. Continuing to permanently close the dilapidated facilities at Rikers is a necessary step toward fulfilling the city’s commitment to close Rikers.
To build off the strides made today, the Mamdani administration must pass a budget that increases funding to alternatives to incarceration, supportive housing, and other proven solutions that safely reduce the jail population without relying on incarceration. Anything short of this will maintain the status quo and further delay the closure of Rikers.”
Background: #ShutRikers is a campaign of the Katal Center for Equity, Health, and Justice. Katal members, supporters, and our allies are working to cut the correctional populations and the budgets used for caging people; shut down Rikers Island; and invest in real community safety: housing, health care, including mental health, education, and jobs.
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