The Mamdani administration is trying to “responsibly” shrink New York City’s jail population as decrepit Rikers Island fills up and the Department of Correction faces a dire staffing crunch, officials said Tuesday.
DOC Commissioner Stanley Richards, who was appointed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani last month, described a system under acute strain and badly in need of overhaul during a City Council hearing.
“Transforming a system like ours is not like turning a speedboat,” he told the council’s committee on criminal justice. “It’s like turning a cruise ship.”
Lockups are operating at about 92% capacity — “the highest level seen in more than a decade,” Richards said — a density he warned “creates additional operational pressure across housing, staffing and service delivery every single day.”
The average daily jail population reached about 7,100 in the 2026 fiscal year, nearly a 10% increase over the previous annual period, and about 43% higher than in 2021 — though then-Mayor Bill de Blasio had freed hundreds of Rikers inmates during the COVID pandemic in 2020.
At the same time, staffing levels have thinned, with the DOC currently employing just 5,600 uniformed officers, far below the 7,060 positions funded as part of the last city budget — and with a wave of retirements looming, Richards said.
More than 800 officers are already eligible to retire, another 235 will reach eligibility next year and 400 more by the end of 2028, he said.
“They want to get out because they don’t feel safe and they don’t feel valued,” Richards told the council.
Staff at Rikers face brutal working conditions, Benny Boscio, president of the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, testified during the hearing.
“We’re dealing with the challenges of a very dangerous environment that comes with supervising a population where 70% of the people in custody are facing violent felony charges,” he said.
Boscio said officers were assaulted more than 660 times last year, including more than 260 “splashing incidents,” in which people in custody mix urine, feces and sometimes blood and throw it in guards’ faces.
He counted 25 sexual assaults on female officers, more than 170 spitting incidents and over 120 stabbings.
Last week, a female officer was slashed by an inmate just below her eye, Boscio said.
Richards — the first formerly incarcerated person to lead the DOC — said that long‑term safety depends on both stabilizing staffing and shrinking the jail population.
He said DOC was working to “responsibly” reduce the number of people in custody by expanding supervised release and alternatives to incarceration.
Richards also mentioned granting early release in some cases and improving access to housing and drug treatment so people do not cycle back into jail.
“We can’t punish our way into compliance,” he said. “When people leave our system and end up in the shelter and end up on the street, they tend to end up back into our system.”
But even as Richards reaffirmed the administration’s commitment to closing Rikers and moving to borough-based jails, he gave an ambiguous timeline for the new facilities once promised by 2027.
“The first borough-based jail facility is not expected to reach substantial completion until 2029,” Richards said.
“That means we must have honest conversations about how we maintain safe conditions on Rikers Island in the years ahead,” he said, citing aging infrastructure that has led to power outages and other dangerous conditions at the troubled jail complex.
Boscio was skeptical that the multi‑billion‑dollar jails will arrive on time or meaningfully improve conditions for staff.
“It’s not the location of a jail that matters; it’s the policies that operate a jail that matter,” he said, pointing to hundreds of broken cell doors that correction officers contend with every day at Rikers.
“Investing in making much needed improvements in our current jails and providing funding for the new jails shouldn’t have to be mutually exclusive,” Boscio said.
