FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, January 6, 2025
Contact: Contact: Yonah Zeitz | 347-201-2768 | yonah@katalcenter.org
Follow on Twitter @KatalCenter | #ShutRikers | #CutShutInvestNY
In Interview Framing His Bid for Re-Election, Mayor Eric Adams Calls for Rikers to Remain Open and Commits to Sending More Low-Income New Yorkers to be Jailed There
Statement from Katal Center
New York, NY: Today, POLITICO published an exclusive interview with Mayor Eric Adams about his public safety agenda, framing his 2025 re-election campaign. In the interview, Adams calls for further roll backs to the bail and discovery reform – which would lead to more low-income New Yorkers being held at Rikers. Adams also, again, trashed the city law to close Rikers as an example of “not real policies” – even though the city passed a law to close Rikers in 2019.
Statement from Yonah Zeitz, NY Advocacy Director, Katal Center for Equity, Health, and Justice.
“For years, New Yorkers have demanded Rikers be shut down. In 2017, after years of organizing by community groups and advocates, the City committed to closing down Rikers. In 2019, after years of studies, reports, public hearings, and debates, the City passed a package of laws to close Rikers by 2026, then during COVID changed the deadline to 2027. Mayor Adams has done everything he can to undermine closure, missing or ignoring nearly every legal and process-oriented deadline of the plan. Mayor Adams treating the Rikers closure law as “optional” says a lot about his leadership. Now he’s making keeping Rikers open – and sending more people to be jailed there – the central planks of his public safety agenda. Rikers is dangerous and a disaster for those jailed there, those who work there, and for our entire City. That’s among the many reasons why a federal judge is poised to appoint an independent federal receiver to oversee Rikers and improve conditions there. The longterm solution for Rikers – the one New Yorkers have demanded for years and the one that is written into City law – is to shut the damn place down, for good.”
Background: #ShutRikers is a campaign of the Katal Center for Equity, Health, and Justice. Katal 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 public safety: housing, health care, education, and jobs.
