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Q&A
Financial assessment of closing Rikers Island and potential savings
0:36:27
·
120 sec
Council Member Sandy Nurse inquires about the Independent Rikers Commission's estimate of $2.4 billion in annual savings once borough-based jails are operational. Zachary Katznelson explains that the savings are based on more efficient facility designs, reduced jail population, and decreased staffing needs.
- Savings come from operational efficiencies and reduced overtime costs
- Modern facility design allows for safer operations with fewer staff
- Addressing case processing times and mental health diversion will reduce the jail population
Sandy Nurse
0:36:27
You all talked about 2,400,000,000.0 per year in savings once the borough based jails are up and running.
0:36:34
Walk us through what went into that financial assessment, specifically can you address how much your savings estimate is dependent upon a reduction or restructuring of the DOC workforce, if you have numbers about how many uniformed or non uniformed staff DOC would need to reach for that savings.
0:36:56
Yeah.
0:36:57
We could start there.
Jonathan Lippman
0:36:58
Zach can answer that.
0:37:00
I always get the math confused.
0:37:01
I was going to Zach to explain it to me.
0:37:03
He'll explain it to you now.
0:37:04
Go ahead, Zach.
Zachary Katznelson
0:37:05
We're starting from a premise that that we're gonna have smaller smaller, modern facilities, safer designs.
0:37:13
I mean, Rikers design alone is a disaster.
0:37:16
There are blind spots everywhere.
0:37:17
It requires different staffing than than a facility that were built today requires.
0:37:22
We're gonna have fewer people in jail because we have to target, as has been discussed, just how long criminal cases are taking in New York City.
0:37:29
That has to change.
0:37:30
And we have to address just how many people with mental illness, and particularly serious mental illness, are in the jails.
0:37:35
Those two factors artificially inflate the population of people at Rikers beyond, well beyond, what might be considered necessary for public safety.
0:37:44
And so we're gonna get to a place where there are as far fewer people in jail.
0:37:49
And the reality is you combine that much more efficient, safer physical design with having fewer people in jail, you don't need as many staff.
0:37:58
Right?
0:37:59
And so when you look at what works out is that the operational budget adjusted for inflation, because we're not talking about today, we're talking about when the whole system is in place, that operationally we will save $2,000,000,000 a year because of those efficiencies.
0:38:15
And we'll also save over $300,000,000 a year on overtime.
0:38:19
And overtime is a tremendous amount of spending every year for the Department
Jonathan Lippman
0:38:24
of Commerce.
0:38:25
What is the staffing now, Zach?
0:38:27
Explain.
Zachary Katznelson
0:38:27
The staffing now is just under they're just under 6,000 officers on payroll on payroll.