Mamdani’s Plan To Close Rikers and Oppose Changes To the Bail Law: A Public Safety Disaster That Will Cost Lives

Mayoral candidate Mamdani is pushing to close Rikers Island by 2027 — without a realistic plan to safely house New York City’s jail population. His proposal for smaller, borough-based jails would accommodate just over 4,000 inmates, while Rikers currently holds more than 7,000. Where would the rest go?  Mamdani’s answer is as reckless as it is revealing: work with district attorneys to release more of them. That’s not reform. That’s a ticking time bomb.

These currently in Rikers are not low-level offenders. Many are repeat violent criminals, gang members, and mentally ill violent individuals. Mamdani’s plan would send them straight back into the same Black and Brown communities they’ve already terrorized. That’s not justice — it’s abandonment.

In 2021, Mamdani attacked judges for setting bail, asking, “How many more have to go to jail before they stop asking for bail?” But the real question is: How many more innocent New Yorkers have to die at the hands of repeat offenders who should have been behind bars after committing a crime?

Mamdani truly believes what he said in 2020: When it comes to crime, he cares more about the 7,600 people in city jails — victims, he believes, of an evil capitalist system — than about the safety of the city’s 8.5 million law-abiding citizens.  Mamdani dismisses prisons, asking, ‘What purpose do they serve?’

As Mamdani climbs in the polls, much of the media remains silent — either unwilling, afraid, or ideologically aligned. But voters deserve the truth: Mamdani’s “no bail, no jail” agenda isn’t just another progressive experiment. It’s a public safety disaster, destroy the city’s economy as business flee, and lead to more dead New Yorkers at the hands of criminals.