AS FY2026 BUDGET IS FINALIZED, THE CAMPAIGN TO CLOSE RIKERS PRAISES CITY COUNCIL’S WORK TO WIN INVESTMENTS IN PROVEN SOLUTIONS FOR HEALTH & SAFETY

 After months of negotiations, the New York City Council and the Mayor announced a handshake budget agreement on Friday that will be voted on today. The adopted budget increases funding for Justice Involved Supportive Housing, Intensive Mobile Treatment teams, Assertive Community Treatment teams, Crisis Respite Centers, Alternatives to Incarceration, Reentry programs, the Supervised Release Intensive Case Management pilot, and the Board of Correction.  In response, the Campaign to Close Rikers released the following statement:

“We are grateful that the City Council has responded to the tireless organizing of survivors of Rikers, impacted families, and our broad-based coalition to secure crucial investments in public health and community safety, which will help to keep people with mental health needs and substance use disorders out of jail by connecting them with the services they need. 

“For the past three years, we have seen thousands more people sent to Rikers, where they do not receive the care they need, and in the worst cases, don’t make it out alive. Yet the Mayor has been resistant to increasing funding for evidence-based interventions, allowing our neighbors to spiral into crisis and the jail population to balloon while the Department of Correction’s budget bloat and mismanagement continue unabated. Had the services funded by this budget been in place three years ago, we could have seen homelessness reduced, public safety increased, and lives saved.  Today, the conditions on Rikers are at crisis levels, and there is no time to waste. We urge the administration to take urgent action to get these expanded services up and running.

“The investments the Council achieved are a down payment on the City’s legal and moral obligation to shrink the jail population and close Rikers - and there is much more work to do. We’ll continue organizing for a city  that invests in care over criminalization, where the billions wasted on DOC’s abuse and corruption are reinvested in the communities that mass incarceration has stolen so much from.”

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