Andrew Cuomo has finally come out for the only sane position on the troubled Rikers Island jail complex: Rebuild it, don’t replace it with smaller, more costly borough ones.
Cuomo had previously blasted the jail complex as a “hell hole” that needed to be closed; it seems that looking at the issue as would-be next mayor has brought him to the sane side of the street (joining GOP nominee Curtis Sliwa).
We can’t say the same about the front-runner, though even Zohran Mamdani has moved a bit toward reality: In pursuit of his call to “abolish jails,” he had wanted to close Rikers and not build any replacements at all; now he (reluctantly) embraces the “replacement” pipe dream . . . er, plan.
It’s a lot like his fallback on defunding the NYPD: Just as his policing vision is still for fewer cops, doing less crime-fighting, his prison vision is for new jails that can’t detain anywhere near as many folks as now sit at Rikers.
That is, he’s down with the de Blasio-era law that requires the 15,000-bed Rikers complex to shutter by 2027, even though that plan assumed smaller jails in four boroughs would be finished first.
Yet even the fanatically anti-Rikers Lippman Commission now admits Rikers can’t close on schedule, the four replacement jails won’t be built before 2032.
And of course costs are running nearly twice the original $9 billion price tag, with most of the work still ahead.
Per current official estimates, the Brooklyn jail is to finish in 2029, the Bronx and Queens ones in 2031, and the Manhattan (Chinatown) one in 2032.
But don’t bet the mortgage (or even your lunch money) on any of those deadlines standing up.
So, even though the progressive-dominated City Council so far won’t even think of updating the law, Gotham has plenty of time to reverse course, drop the borough-based jails and simply rebuild on Rikers Island.
That way, New York City can retain the detention capacity it actually needs, and not have to start cutting perps loose simply because there’s nowhere to put them.
Yes, the Rikers jails need a lot of work, including management and labor overhauls as well as reconstruction.
Yet fixing the “hellhole” requires realism, not “look at our lovely vision” fantasies.
Regular New Yorkers will pay the price if powerful progressives keep up their denial of Rikers realities.
Count this as one more issue where the whole city will suffer if Mamdani and his crew of deranged socialist theorizers take over City Hall.