Two More Detainees Die at Rikers, Nudging City Hall to Rethink the Timeline

Two more deaths at Rikers Island again test the city’s ability to reform a jail whose days may finally be numbered.

It is a truism in New York politics that no week at Rikers Island passes quietly. But the dispatches from the East River this May seemed especially stark: two men—Barry Cozart, 39, and another as yet unnamed—were found dead in custody within a span of days. In a city where bail reform and carceral justice regularly provoke legislative logjams and tabloid outrage, the latest tragedies have sharpened an already acute dilemma: what to do about the city’s long-festering jail complex.

The events, confirmed by the Department of Correction (DOC), advance a grim tally. In 2023, at least nine people died while detained at Rikers or other city jails—a frequency that the Independent Commission on New York City Criminal Justice and Incarceration Reform has labelled “unconscionable.” Cozart, the third Rikers detainee to die so far in 2024 (as of mid-May), was discovered by guards and could not be revived, DOC officials said. Investigations by both the city and federal monitors are ongoing.

Long derided as a Dickensian relic, Rikers encompasses eight sprawling jails that have, for years, been synonymous with dysfunction. Violence among inmates and against corrections personnel remains a stubborn feature, exacerbated by staff shortages and mounting absenteeism. In 2022, federal monitors flagged “pervasive disorder, abhorrent living conditions and an ongoing risk of harm.” The exodus from city jails, promised by successive mayors, keeps stalling amid political inertia.

For New Yorkers, these deaths are not just isolated tragedies but harbingers of a judicial and administrative breakdown that goes beyond the walls of Rikers. Most detainees are pretrial, unable to post bail, or held for parole violations—often for nonviolent offenses. Prolonged pretrial detention has become a de facto sorting mechanism for the city’s poor and mentally ill, leaving already-vulnerable populations at heightened risk.

The politics hardly help. Mayor Eric Adams, a former police captain, has vacillated: he is pledged, in theory, to shutter Rikers by 2027, per a 2019 City Council mandate, but his administration appears tepid about alternatives. The transition plan envisions four new borough-based jails with a cap of 3,300 beds—down from Rikers’ average population of 6,000—but these projects are years behind schedule and beset by predictable cost overruns. Correction officers’ unions, for their part, decry persistent understaffing and warn of “chaos” should Rikers close prematurely.

There are, to be fair, glimmers of reform. City jails now house about half as many inmates as a decade ago, thanks to falling crime and legislative bail changes. Oversight has, in fits and starts, improved: the federal monitor, Steve J. Martin, wields some leverage for urging remedial action. Still, the system is so sclerotic that even basic fixes—like ensuring regular mental-health checks—seem to stymie the bureaucracy.

Fiscal pickles abound. The city, yawning under a projected $7.2bn budget gap for fiscal year 2025, faces a correctional bill of $556,000 per detainee annually. That is nearly triple the cost for comparable-sized cities, according to the city comptroller. Crime, though off its pandemic-era highs, remains a political cudgel, complicating the push for noncarceral alternatives.

The deaths come as the federal government considers wresting control from City Hall. Judge Laura Taylor Swain of the U.S. District Court—overseeing a consent decree on jail conditions—has repeatedly signalled impatience with the city’s dawdling. In November 2023, the Legal Aid Society joined advocates in urging a federal receivership for Rikers, arguing that local stewardship has proved “irredeemable.” Receivership, last invoked after the 1971 Attica uprising upstate, would be politically humiliating for Mayor Adams and costly for city taxpayers.

A test for justice reform everywhere

New York’s conundrum is, alas, not unique. Cities from Chicago to Los Angeles have struggled to reconcile endemic jail mismanagement with constitutional rights to humane treatment. Federal oversight, as in Alabama’s prison system, has often proven a protracted, expensive affair, with results that are at best mixed. Yet the optics in New York are especially damning: America’s largest city, awash in capital and clout, cannot run a jail that meets basic standards of safety.

So, what should be done? Streamlining the pretrial process would help, as would bold investments in mental health and diversionary programmes. The city’s current trajectory—expensive, indecisive, and mired in litigation—serves neither the public nor detainees. Closing Rikers would signal a welcome shift away from a 20th-century vestige, but only if the city’s alternative is a justice system that is not just smaller, but fairer.

The days when indifferent progress could paper over appalling conditions have, we reckon, passed. The question is not if the city can afford to close Rikers, but if a city with New York’s wealth and ambition can credibly afford not to. The recent deaths, like so many before, argue for the urgency of action over yet another blue-ribbon panel’s report.

If the city neglects the lessons yet again, wider federal intervention would be less an overreach than a rescue mission. New Yorkers, perpetually wary of outsiders meddling in city affairs, might find it galling. Yet sometimes indignant pride must yield to self-preservation.

In the end, whether or not Rikers finally closes, its legacy will linger—in the lives cut short, the families broken, and the reputation of a city that too often chooses delay over decision. The world eyes the five boroughs to see if American justice can, with enough pressure, truly reform itself. For now, the jury is still out. ■