Brooklyn won’t need to build a new jail when Rikers Island closes — they already have one, Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez said Sunday.
Plans to eventually close Rikers Island would include moving inmates to jails in every borough except Staten Island. In Kings County, the Brooklyn House of Detention in tony Boerum would be able to absorb the influx, he said.
“I’m lucky. In Brooklyn we already have a jail,” he said during a radio interview with John Catsimatidis. “The political issues of where a jail would go or how we can house people in the boroughs don’t really apply to Brooklyn.
Gonzalez noted that while the jail “may need some new renovations … I don’t think we would need to build anything new.”
But renovating the Brooklyn House of Detention, might not be as simple as Gonzalez makes it sound.
A decade ago, residents and then-city Comptroller Bill Thompson blocked a plan to double the size of that jail with an additional 1,500 inmate beds.
Mayor de Blasio has called for the shutdown of Rikers within the next ten years. As part of the plan, the city would have to find locations for and construct new jails to relocate prisoners.
Hizzoner promised Staten Island would not get a new jail, leaving the burden for the remaining four boroughs.