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City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams called Rikers Island a “death camp” Monday even as she admitted the troubled jail complex can’t shutter by 2027 — but still refused to say whether she’d amend the law mandating its closure.
“The pandemic caused the slowdown of the closure of Rikers, obviously,” Adams finally acknowledged during a forum on public safety at Hunter College’s Public Policy Institute, with some of her opponents in the upcoming mayoral election.
“I don’t think there’s anyone in the room who will debate the fact that it will be delayed as far as the closure. That is not the question. I think that is a reality,” she said.
Adams added: “Riker’s island is a death camp — I think we can at least agree to that.”
The infamous lockup — which has for years faced criticisms over unsafe conditions and overcrowding — is legally mandated to close by 2027, based on a controversial plan that would build four borough-based jail
Mayor Eric Adams has argued that the deadline can’t be met, and asked the City Council to amend the law it passed in 2019 setting the closure timeline.
But despite calls from the mayor, Adrienne Adams, who took over as council speaker in 2022, hasn’t taken any concrete steps to enact a new plan to tweak the current deadline.
“Closing Riker’s is the law,” Adams, no relation to the mayor, said during Monday’s forum when independent mayoral candidate Jim Walden suggested an alternative to total closure.
Rikers has already seen five inmates so far this year, but some critics called out the speaker for her characterization of the jail complex as a “death camp.”
“To call it a death camp is a gross political exaggeration,” a corrections officer, who asked to remain anonymous, told The Post.
“That is an insult to survivors of real death camps, and that statement offends a whole community,” another correction officer griped.
