New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced on Tuesday a new therapeutic facility that will be used to treat the mental health of inmates from Rikers Island.
The move marks the mayor’s first step toward closing the notoriously brutal jail complex by next year. The therapeutic housing unit at NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue in Manhattan will be one of many facilities to fill the void left by the closure of Rikers.
“Opening this new clinical facility at Bellevue Hospital is how we begin to close Rikers Island — not with promises, but with action,” Mamdani said in a statement.
“For too long, people with serious medical needs have been left to suffer in a system that was never designed to care for them,” he added. “Today, we are building something different: a system that delivers real care, treats people with dignity and makes our city safer for everyone—incarcerated people, corrections officers and all New Yorkers.”
During a press conference, Mamdani described Rikers as a “de facto mental health facility” replete with “calamitous and unsafe” conditions for its prisoners.
Illustrating the prison’s dysfunction, he cited the recent deaths of two Rikers inmates who died due to medical complications. The mayor stressed those deaths were “not isolated incidents,” noting more than 100 people have died on the island since 2015.
To help solve the problem, New York City officials are transferring inmates to fill the 104-bed therapeutic facility at Bellevue Hospital, starting on Wednesday. The prisoners who will be moved soon are those suffering from acute medical conditions and serious mental illness, Mamdani said.
While answering questions from the press, he revealed that the initiative is generating much interest from corrections officers who want to work there. In his conversation with Department of Corrections Commissioner Stanley Richards, Mamdani learned that more than 400 applications have been submitted. The department was only seeking to fill about 130 to 140 positions.
Two additional sites at NYC Health + Hospitals/Woodhull and North Central Bronx will be opened by 2029, bringing the total number of beds to 340.
The total jail population at Rikers Island surpassed 7,000 in March 2025, further straining the deteriorating prison. It is legally required to close by Aug. 31, 2027, after which it will be replaced by a borough-based jail system. The Mamdani administration remains committed to meeting the deadline, despite the plan having faced delays for years.
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“Over the course of the campaign, I spoke about our commitment to closing Rikers Island, and I also spoke candidly with New Yorkers about the fact that the prior administration’s lack of interest, to put it charitably, towards fulfilling that [goal] meant that the stated deadline was practically impossible to fulfill,” Mamdani said, taking a critical shot at former Mayor Eric Adams.
“It is going to take us quite a bit of time to ensure that we can put our city back on the path that the City Council voted for in 2019,” he added, “and it will also take a whole-of-government approach.”