Although the number of people in jail and prison in the United States remains stubbornly entrenched at around 2.2 million, an important trend emerged in 2019—big cities fought back against jail expansion and actively voted to shutter jails and decarcerate.
The New York City Council voted in October to close Rikers Island, the city’s decaying complex of 10 jails—a place synonymous with violence, isolation, and despair.Los Angeles County voted down not one, but two, contracts for new jails—first canceling plans for a new women’s jail in February and then rejecting a nearly $2 billion contract in August to build a mental health facility for incarcerated people that opponents said was just a new jail in disguise.And Atlanta voted in May to close one of its city jails and create a task force to reimagine another purpose for the building before considering demolition.Across the country, other fights against new jail construction and against jail expansion were waged—in cities as diverse as New Orleans, San Francisco, St. Louis, and Washington, DC.
Grassroots organizing and advocacy led by formerly incarcerated people created the conditions that made it possible for policymakers and elected officials to vote for decarceration. What would have been unthinkable a few years ago—to resist jail expansion or new jail construction—suddenly became politically feasible, garnering widespread support.
In New York City, just a few years ago the idea of closing Rikers Island was, in the words of Mayor Bill de Blasio, “noble but unrealistic.”But in October, after years of advocacy by the #CLOSErikers campaign and other advocates, the New York City Council voted to approve the construction of four new borough-based jails to replace the decaying facilities that currently exist in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens—including closing and decommissioning the notorious Rikers Island complex by 2026 so that jails can no longer operate on the island after that date.The plan is forecast to reduce the number of operating jails in the city from 11 to four and cut the city’s jail capacity by 76 percent—from nearly 14,000 beds today to a projected 3,300 in seven years.New York City already has a jail incarceration rate lower than any big city in the country, at 119 per 100,000 people, compared to 235 per 100,000 in Los Angeles and 453 in Philadelphia.There are currently 7,000 people in jail in New York City on an average day, compared to a high of 22,000 in the early 1990s.By the time the city’s jail population declines to no more than 3,300 people incarcerated on any given day, its jail incarceration rate will be 56 per 100,000 people.The last time New York City had a jail population that low was in the 1920s, a century ago.
The city’s plan for closing Rikers Island was not without dissent, however. A jail abolitionist group, No New Jails NYC, formed in 2018 to oppose the expenditure of over $8 billion in new jail construction—the estimated cost of constructing the four new borough-based jails.No New Jails’s position was that the jails on Rikers Island should be closed and no new jails in the boroughs should be built.Instead, the group argued, the billions of dollars spent on new jail construction should be redirected to community-based resources and services.The No New Jails position garnered significant support from several mainstream organizations—and even one of the city’s most influential politicians, U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.Ultimately, the city council voted for construction of four jails to replace the existing borough-based jails—called the Tombs, the Boat, Queens Detention Complex, and the Brooklyn House of Detention—where conditions are squalid and which have troubled histories of their own.Yet the advocacy of No New Jails, along with other groups, led to many important provisions for decarceration in the final package that was approved as part of the city council vote: a reduction in the number of jail beds planned from 5,000 to 3,300; $391 million allocated in this year’s city budget for alternatives to incarceration and community-based services; a land change provision to prevent the city from using Rikers Island as a jail after 2026; and a commitment to investing in design and culture change to prevent the violence and indignity of Rikers Island from being recreated in the borough-based facilities.
In California, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors had already approved at least $2 billion in its 2018 budget for the construction of a new men’s jail in downtown Los Angeles and a women’s jail in Lancaster, about an hour drive outside of the city.Advocates in Los Angeles formed the JusticeLA Coalition to fight back against the foregone conclusion that billions should be spent in new jail construction in a county that incarcerates 17,000 people on any given day.(In comparison, New York City’s average daily jail population hovers at 7,000 and Chicago’s (Cook County) at approximately 6,000.)
JusticeLA’s campaign promoted community-based solutions instead of jail to address the mental health and treatment needs of people arrested and incarcerated in Los Angeles. It launched a massive campaign against new jail construction, which included teach-ins, public forums, and persistent meetings with county officials.In February, the board canceled plans to move forward with building the new women’s jail in Lancaster and converted the plan for a new men’s jail into a 4,000-bed “mental health focused jail.”Facing continued pressure and opposition to a “mental health jail” from the coalition—as well as #BlackLivesMatter and Reform L.A. Jails—the board scrapped the plan entirely in August and canceled the $1.7 billion construction project in order to pursue community treatment, diversion, and local reinvestment options.
The momentum for decarceration wasn’t limited to the coasts. Advocates in Atlanta secured a tremendous win in May when the Atlanta City Council voted to close the Atlanta City Detention Center and create a task force to come up with ideas for how to repurpose the building to address the needs of the community.Although the task force’s recommendations aren’t due until February 2020, early ideas have included a health and wellness center, a job training center, or a mental health facility.Key to making the change happen? The groups Women on the Rise and the Racial Justice Action Center, which launched a “Close the Jail ATL” campaign calling for the money spent on the detention center—about $33 million annually—to be reallocated to community programs and services that could help address the root causes of incarceration.
The victories to shutter jails and decarcerate didn’t extend to more rural parts of the country, though. Sobering data released in December showed that while jail populations in urban areas declined in the past five years by 18 percent (36,200 fewer people in jail), they dramatically increased in rural counties by 27 percent (39,000 more people in jail) as a result of new jail construction and expansion.The momentum for decarceration—against new jail construction and expansion—certainly has champions in rural counties, but their stories haven’t made headline news in the way that the closing of Rikers Island and the canceling of two new jails in Los Angeles did this year.