New Brooklyn Jail Will Be 10 Stories Shorter, Council Says

DOWNTOWN, BROOKLYN — The controversial 39-story Brooklyn jail that will become one of four prisons replacing Rikers Island will be at least 10 stories shorter, the City Council announced.

City Council Speaker Corey Johnson — and local council members from each of the boroughs where the four new jails are to be built — said Tuesday that they will shrink the Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan and Bronx jail plans now that the city's incarcerated population is expected to drop even more drastically than originally projected.

Johnson and Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Monday that New York City's jail population is now predicted to reach 3,300 by the time Rikers Island fully closes in 2026, down from its most-recent projection of 4,000.

The redesign also answers the call of local officials and advocates who had long called for the new jails to be much smaller than their original proposals.

In Brooklyn, both Borough President Eric Adams and Community Board 2 had voted against the city's plan, in part arguing that the proposal to nearly double the number of beds in the jails made it much too large.

“From the outset of this plan, I have said the proposed Brooklyn site was simply too big and out of context with the scale of the neighborhood," Council Member Stephen Levin said Tuesday. "I am glad to see these critical changes made to the plan, along with the recognition that we need to do everything in our capabilities to reduce our jail system as small as possible."

The announcement comes two days before the City Council is expected to vote on the new, borough-based jails.

The new sizes mean that the Brooklyn jail — which will replace the 11-story Brooklyn House of Detention on Atlantic Avenue — will be cut from 395 feet high to a maximum of 295 feet, or from 39 stories to 29. The facility will be 816,900 square feet instead of the originally estimated 1.2 million square feet, officials said.

That height is still about 60 feet taller than the size Adams recommended as a condition of his approval for supporting the plan.

Officials said the new sizes will mean each new jail will hold about 886 beds.

The Brooklyn plans had originally proposed expanding the complex from 815 beds to 1,437, which Adams and the community board both pushed back on. Adams argued the number should be no more than 900 and Community Board 2 suggested 875.

The Brooklyn House of Detention, which is largely used to house those waiting for their bail hearing or trial, already stands largely empty given the city's declining prison population. The jail housed only about 360 people last month.

The Manhattan jail, once the tallest proposal at 45 floors, will be reduced the most, shrinking 16 floors from 450 feet to 295 feet in the new design. The Queens jail will go from 27 to 19 floors and the Bronx jail will be reduced from 24 to 19 stories.

The council members cited the city's plans to expand its supervised release program to reduce the number of people locked up while awaiting trial and new state laws that will end cash bail for nonviolent offenders starting in January as reasons for the reduction to the incarcerated population.

This article was updated with the responses from the city about the number of beds and the square-footage now proposed at the facility. The new NYC jails were approved by City Council on Thursday.