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NYC’s ‘floating jail’ will close next month after 31 years
By
Jessy Edwards
Published Sep 5, 2023
Modified Sep 5, 2023
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Gary Hershorn/Getty Images
By
Jessy Edwards
Published Sep 5, 2023
Modified Sep 5, 2023
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New York City's "floating jail" — which was supposed to be temporary when it opened in the East River three decades ago — is finally set to shutter.
The Vernon C. Bain Center – nicknamed “the Boat” – will close in October, the Department of Correction told Gothamist on Tuesday.
About 500 people in custody and 200 correction officers and staff stationed there will be moved off the boat and into jails on Rikers Island and other facilities, DOC spokesperson Patrick Rocchio said.
The move will help DOC more efficiently manage detainees, staff and resources by “centralizing” operations on Rikers Island, he said.
The 625-foot-long floating detention center was built in 1989 and opened in 1992 as a temporary fix for a soaring jail population at Rikers fueled by the “war on drugs.”
But the barge off Hunts Point in the Bronx is still open more than three decades later.
Criminal justice advocates have often called for the makeshift jail's closure, especially in the wake of detainee deaths on the boat in recent years.
In September 2021, 24-year-old Stephan Khadu died at Lincoln Hospital after he was transferred from the floating jail. His family blamed jail conditions for his deterioration in health.
A year later, 48-year-old detainee Gregory Acevedo, who was in custody on a robbery charge, died from his injuries after jumping from the barge into the East River.
His sister, Cynthia Acevedo, told Gothamist in a text message that she will be “so glad” to see the floating jail shuttered, but added that more city jail facilities need to close.
She said that instead of being moved from “the Boat” to Rikers, detainees with mental health challenges should be helped into treatment and diverted from incarceration.
“Gregory, like so many others, needed housing and treatment, not jail,” she said, adding that she was emotional when she got the news just weeks before the first anniversary of her brother’s death.
Edwin Santana, a criminal justice advocate with the Urban Justice Center's Freedom Agenda, called the Vernon C. Bain Center's closure “bittersweet.”
“I'm glad to hear that 'the Boat' is going to close in October,” Santana said. “But I'm saddened to hear that they're going to put the people that are on the boat on Rikers, because no one should be at Rikers. No one should be detained there and no one should be working there.”
Santana spent time detained both on “the Boat” and on Rikers, and said the barge was an extension of the jail facility in terms of its “culture of violence.”
The jail system had its highest detainee death rate in a quarter-century last year, with 27 detainees dying since Mayor Eric Adams' inauguration on Jan.1, 2022. Skyrocketing violence and lack of access to medical care have also plagued Rikers in past years.
Rikers is scheduled to close by September 2027 under a 2019 City Council plan to relocate detainees to smaller jails built in the boroughs. However, the mayor urged the Council to revisit the plan last week, citing high costs of building the new jails, which were initially meant to house 3,300 detainees.
Since 2019, the jail population has increased to more than 6,000.
Correction: This story and its headline have been corrected to accurately reflect the number of years since the jail opened.
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new york city
public safety
Jessy Edwards
Jessy Edwards covers incarceration and public safety. Before working at Gothamist/WNYC, she covered daily and breaking news at NBC New York and Brooklyn news at BK Reader. Got a tip? Email [email protected].
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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