Mayor Bill de Blasio vowed on Friday to close the troubled jail complex on Rikers Island, which has spawned federal investigations, brought waves of protests and became a byword for brutality, in a move he said was intended to end an era of mass incarceration in New York City.
The pledge to eventually close Rikers, a proposition once thought to be politically and practically unfeasible, came as an independent commission was about to release a 97-page report that recommended replacing the jails on Rikers with a system of smaller, borough-based jails, at a cost of $10.6 billion.
