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PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Jennifer Hose, Supervising Attorney of the Decarceration Project at Legal Aid Society
3:46:18
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144 sec
Jennifer Hose, representing the Legal Aid Society's Decarceration Project, testified about the urgent need to close Rikers Island and address the root causes of jail population growth in New York City. She emphasized that Rikers is unfit for human habitation and criticized the city's overreliance on pretrial detention and unaffordable bail.
- Hose called for expanding transitional and supportive housing, alternatives to incarceration, and appointing coordinators for Rikers closure and borough-based jail transition.
- She warned that without addressing pretrial incarceration and investing in housing, new borough-based jails would replicate the same crisis as Rikers.
- Hose stressed that community resources, not high jail populations, lead to safer communities.
Jennifer Hose
3:46:18
Good afternoon.
3:46:19
My name is Jennifer Hoes, and I am a supervising attorney of the Decarceration Project at the Legal Aid Society.
3:46:24
Our project works with community partners and coalitions recognizing that the safest communities are not the ones with the highest jail populations, but the ones with the most resources.
3:46:34
The Rikers Commission report reaffirms what our incarcerated clients have reported for decades, that Rikers Island Jail complex is unfit for any form of human habitation and has led to the death of at least 62 New Yorkers since 2020.
3:46:48
While the commission's report makes several recommendations, it falls short of grappling with the true driver of jail incarceration in New York City.
3:46:55
The number of people confined pretrial on unaffordable bail determines whether the jail population increases or decreases.
3:47:03
The vast majority of people on Rikers are held pretrial, eighty four percent as of February, and remain jailed solely because they cannot afford to buy their freedom.
3:47:12
The reality is that the jail population in New York City will continue to rise as long as prosecutors are requesting and judges are setting excessive bail and failing to utilize non monetary conditions of release that allow people to safely remain in their communities and ensure their return to court.
3:47:30
The city's failure to close Rikers on time is a direct result of its continued overreliance on pretrial detention, its failure to invest at scale in community based programming, and its systemic refusal to treat housing and healthcare as core components of public safety.
3:47:46
If the city council is serious about closing Rikers, it must at least pass legislation and allocate funding to dramatically expand the availability of transitional and supportive housing, fully implement and expand alternatives to incarceration and alternatives to detention, establish a coordinator for Rikers Island closure and a coordinator for the borough based jail transition, especially given that the mayor has appointed a deputy the deputy mayor to head the return of ICE to Rikers, but has failed to appoint anyone to be in charge of closing Rikers.
3:48:17
If these investments are made today, the commission's own projections indicate that the city could safely reduce the jail population by 2,300 people.
3:48:26
But without confronting pretrial incarceration, without investing in housing, and without real accountability, the new jails will simply become a borough based version of the same crisis.
3:48:36
We will have replicated the architecture of Rikers Island with just newer walls.
3:48:41
Thank you.
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Testimony by Christopher Boyle, Director of Data Research and Policy at New York County Defender Services, on State Sentenced Prisoners on Rikers Island