Emergency Rally At BK Jail Aims To Stop Reported Moves To Rikers

DOWNTOWN, BROOKLYN — Activists who say people in the Brooklyn House of Detention are secretly being moved to Rikers Island to speed up the city's new jail plan will hold an emergency rally at the facility on Friday.

No New Jails, a group against the city's plan to replace Rikers with four new, borough-based jails, will gather outside the 275 Atlantic Ave. jail at 6 p.m. to call for an end to the moves, which The City first reported on late last month. City officials "flatly deny" that the moves are happening, but advocates say they've heard from families of those incarcerated at the Brooklyn jail that entire wings of the complex have been moved to Rikers.

Union members from the jail's staff told The City that the move is an aim to empty the 357 or so men incarcerated in the Brooklyn jail to Rikers Island by the end of the year to make way for a new facility. The new Atlantic Avenue jail is one of four that the city plans to build so it can close Rikers.

Activists contend moving more people into Rikers as part of the efforts to close it seems counterintuitive at best.

"The city is subjecting incarcerated people to the violence and trauma of Rikers, for no other reason than political maneuvering," No New Jails activists said. "If the city were serious about decarceration, they would let people out of jails and shut them down, not move them around in the middle of the night."

The demolition of the Brooklyn House of Detention is likely years away, advocates said. The city's jail plan, which got the OK from the Planning Commission last week, isn't scheduled to be completed until 2026.

Officials with the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice said that there is still no timeline for when the Brooklyn detention center will be demolished to build a new jail.

They said that although people move between the Brooklyn jail and Rikers Island normally —the Brooklyn jail is used to house those waiting for their bail hearing — the reports that there is a plan to move people to get ready to demolish the building is false.

"The Department of Correction is not secretly transferring people from (Brooklyn House of Detention) to Rikers," a representative said. "There have been no policy changes to DOC."

The representative added that wings and housing areas within the Brooklyn facility are being consolidated because, like at all jails in the city, the incarcerated population is going down. The Brooklyn House of Detention had 357 people housed there at the time of the City report, but can house up to 815 people.

The de Blasio administration has said its jail plan is part of an effort to bring down the city's incarcerated population to a total of 4,000 people.

No New Jails has long advocated against the city's jail plan, arguing that it does not include a legally binding commitment to close Rikers. While city officials say the lockups will better serve incarcerated people, opponents worry that they would replicate the same deplorable conditions that have long plagued the existing jail complex.