Mayor De Blasio’s decision to close down Riker's Island, made after the release of Judge Jonathan Lippman’s report entitled "A More Just New York: Rethinking Rikers Island" may be one of the few things he’s getting right. De Blasio released his own report afterward, his entitled "Smaller, Safer, Fairer: A Roadmap To Closing Rikers Island," which lists the reasons that permanently shutting down the incarceration facility and instead replacing it with borough-based prisons would be a fiscally prudent, morally righteous and humane step to take. There is much to gain from closing the facility and little to lose, the biggest of these losses being badass cops on crime shows threatening their suspects with "a night at Rikers" if they didn’t spill.

But besides the more obvious reasons to shut down the facility, such as its drain on tax dollars due to its run down infrastructure which functions essentially as a black hole for state spending, this closure should be seen as an opportunity to rethink incarceration as a whole. One of these areas of institutional reform is that of bail. On any given day, three quarters of the almost 10,000 incarcerated individuals in New York City's prisons are those that await the decisions or proceedings of their cases and are locked up simply because they are unable to afford bail. This institutional norm very clearly infringes upon the very essence of the American judicial system that is 'innocent until proven guilty.' The new report proposes cutting down dramatically, if not completely eliminating, the use of monetary bail, because as the report states, "a person's freedom should not be determined by what's in his or her wallet."

The closing of Rikers Island provides a unique opportunity to examine the norms of incarceration in New York City as it houses a majority of New York’s incarcerated. Another major issue with the facility that is brought to light by this report is that of distance. The island is simply far, and this distance has both monetary and other harms on the city, the incarcerated, the felon's friends and families and the correction officers. The city spends upward of 31 million dollars annually solely on transporting inmates to and from the island, a cost that would be essentially demolished with the borough based system. It also puts undue burdens on those that visit the inmates, as traveling to and from the island can take up the entire day, leading to missed work and child care costs to these visitors. The burden is also borne by the correction officers, who are often forced to sleep in their cars between shifts rather than go home. The island isolates the incarcerated population, creating an "out of sight out of mind" dynamic.

Shutting down the facility simply becomes common sense, but how this will be achieved is a little more tricky. The ideal solution is that of reduction then closure, reducing incarceration by half over the next ten years and then scattering the remaining inmates to the smaller borough-based jails. However, reducing incarceration is much easier said then done; there are a few concrete solutions to this reduction but their implementation is not one that can be guaranteed. The first such solution is outlined simply as prevention. The easiest way to reduce incarceration is to prevent people from committing crimes in the first place, a solution that can be called simplistic at best. While the report does mention specific programs such as "youth development initiatives, neighborhood beatification projects, employment programs, cure violence efforts, and others," it undermines just how difficult such an initiative is going to be. America as a whole, including New York, has an epidemic of incarcerating Black and Latinx individuals, commonly known as "The War on Drugs." Until drug policy reform is more seriously considered, this kind of prevention will remain simply an idea.

Furthermore, the report mentions other initiatives such as diversion and mental health programs. Diversion would be defined as diverting misdemeanor crimes form criminal courts and providing other programs, but this 'other' still needs to be defined. In terms of mental health, the report suggests ensuring that those with mental illnesses not be incarcerated in prisons, and while it does not define how this will be done, one solution could be the wide-ranging use of mental health courts. Such courts sentence mentally ill individuals who have committed crimes into community-based treatment facilities for rehabilitation in lieu of incarceration, which is proven to only further deteriorate their mental states.

The report also proposes measures to decrease pre-trial incarceration, by reducing case proceeding times and delays, through creating standards to resolve felonies by six months and misdemeanors within 90 days. Additionally, the report suggests making efforts to resolve cases through plea-bargaining rather than trials. Most importantly, our justice system should restore the right to a speedy trial by eliminating the standard of having court appearances spread out over months. Another important step the report takes is eliminating, or at the very least reducing the use of monetary bail, as it leads to pre-trial incarceration simply for the reason that the individual is unable to pay bail. It suggests the replacement of bail, which "nine in ten felons are unable to afford." Instead, the report proposes using pre-trial supervision through rigorous monitoring. The report also suggests the elimination of short jail sentences, finding alternatives to incarceration and raising the age to be tried as an adult to 18.

Overall, this report and decision could be a revolutionary step for incarceration in New York City if it is executed successfully, but the fact is that there are far too many opportunities for it to fail. Mainly, the concern lies with reducing incarceration. While the report provides some meaningful ways to accomplish this, it simultaneously too broadly states the need for 'alternatives' without defining what those alternatives would be.