FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, March 28, 2024
Contact: Yonah Zeitz, yonah@katalcenter.org • 347-201-2769
Follow on Twitter/X @KatalCenter • #ShutRikers #CutShutInvestNY
Following Two Years of Rising Jail Population and Increasing Dysfunction at Rikers, Mayor Adams Finally Appointments Two New Commissioners to Dormant Local Conditional Release Commission
Statement by the Katal Center
New York, NY: Today, the New York City Council Committee on Rules, Privileges and Elections will consider two nominations for Commissioners of the New York City Local Conditional Release Commission. This Commission can order the early release of people serving city sentences of a year or less – which is currently between 300-400 people. However, the Commission has been unable to meet since Mayor Adams took office because he failed to fill the empty slots. Since Mayor Adams took office, his public safety approach has led to an increase in the city’s jail population by over a thousand. Now there are over 6,200 incarcerated in city jails and the administration is planning for the city’s jail population to go up to 7000 this year.
Statement from Yonah Zeitz, Director of Advocacy of the Katal Center for Equity, Health, and Justice: “With Rikers in crisis, Mayor Adams wasted two years before filling two vacant positions of the Conditional Release Commission. Meanwhile, under Adams, the city’s jail population has skyrocketed and the Rikers closure plans have been derailed.
Once fully operational, the Conditional Release Commission must swiftly use its power to release the nearly 400 incarcerated people who are eligible under the rules. But given the crisis at Rikers, that’s not enough. Mayor Adams must end his jail-first approach to public safety. We call on Mayor Adams to cut the number of people held in Rikers and other city jails, cut the budgets used for caging people, shut down Rikers, and invest in real public safety: housing, health care, education, jobs.”
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