The plan to close the jails on Rikers Island and replace them with four new borough-based facilities by 2026 has been delayed at least a year, if not more.

While the plan approved by the City Council and signed into law by Mayor Bill de Blasio last year requires the new jails in Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx to be built by 2026, planning documents obtained by Gothamist show the work stretching well into 2027.

It’s not clear what the delay means for the land-use process, already underway, which requires all the jails on Rikers to close by 2026.

The delay comes as a federal monitor has determined that violence in the city’s jail system is at an all-time high.

While members of the de Blasio administration acknowledged the delay during a City Council budget hearing in May, they could not agree on a reason.

"We have delayed the start of some of the design work and on the project. Part of that is a reflection of both the financial situation and our ability to actually go forward in terms of social distancing,” Ken Godliner, the first deputy budget director for the City's Office of Management and Budget, told the budget committee.

Jamie Torres-Springer, the deputy commissioner of the city’s Department of Design and Construction, the city agency charged with demolishing the old jails and building the new ones, said the delay was not pandemic related but "simply reorienting years in which dollars are spent as we refined our program.”

“And we had a better understanding of, here's how much money we would need in this year versus the following year. So it was simply a reorientation of funding."

Gothamist’s request to interview Torres-Springer was declined.

The City's Independent Budget Office recently reported that "total spending on borough based jail construction remains at $8.7 billion, but some spending has been shifted to later in the plan, including the movement of $140 million from 2020 to future years."

Each of the new jails will hold 886 people, for a total city jail capacity of 3,544, according to DDC planning documents obtained by Gothamist. As of July, there were 3,843 people in custody in city jails, a 45 percent decrease from the same period in 2019, after state bail reforms and post-pandemic safety measures were instituted.

DDC is using its freshly-minted design-build authority to hire the architects and construction firms that will do the actual work which the agency will direct. Design-build power allows the city to publish a single request for proposals and contract with qualified firms for capital projects. DDC is also in charge of demolishing the existing city jails in Queens, Manhattan and Brooklyn, which need to be removed before construction of the new jails can begin, as well as construction of a parking garage for the new Queens jail.

The entire jail project has been broken into seven parts, or sub-projects. The first sub-project put out for bid by DDC is the dismantling of the current Queens House of Detention, which is currently scheduled to begin in late 2021.

The DDC documents obtained by Gothamist were intended to show prospective applicants what the work in Queens generally entails. One page, titled “Program Schedule,” shows the timeline for completion of the entire project, not just the work in Queens. DDC's schedule shows that construction of the new jails in both Queens and Brooklyn will stretch at least through mid-2027. Given DDC’s poor track record of completing projects on time, it's possible construction of these jails will extend into 2028, if not beyond.

Councilwoman Vanessa Gibson, chair of the subcommittee that held the May budget hearing, asked Torres-Springer point-blank whether DDC would be able to complete the new jails in time for Rikers to close in 2026.

"We will have to evaluate any impact that the crisis has had on the program once we are through this stage. But we certainly remain committed to those goals," Springer answered.

Gibson replied, “We all remain committed to goals, but that’s fundamentally different than actually implementing it.”

Stanley Richards, vice-chair of the City's Board of Correction, and a member of the Mayor's Working Group for Design of the four new jails, said the struggle to complete the project on time will mostly depend on whether there is money to get it done.

"We are just facing a real economic challenge right now in terms of going forward," he said. "How do we fund it? How are we sure we can pull it off? How does the city ensure that it really happens?"

It was a financial calamity of the magnitude the City is now facing that thwarted an earlier effort to sell Rikers Island to the state in the late 1970s.

In 1978, Herb Sturz, a deputy mayor under Ed Koch, tried to push through a plan to sell Rikers Island to the state and build new jails next to the courthouses in each borough. The plan foundered on concerns of how the cash-strapped city would pay for the new jails.

Sturz told Gothamist that he is heartened by how far the city has gotten with this new plan to close Rikers, but that more must be done to solidify the commitment.

"Raze one of the jails on Rikers Island that is currently empty as a manifestation of that commitment," Sturz said. "This would send a strong signal to people that this is happening."

Tyler Nims, Executive Director of The Independent Commission on NYC Criminal Justice and Incarceration Reform, which advocated for the closure of Rikers in 2017, told Gothamist the de Blasio administration should "take action now so the next administration can finish the job with speed."

"Start demolishing the decrepit Brooklyn jail, the Queens jail, and jails on Rikers, and end the violence and impunity described by the federal monitor," Nims said. "People are suffering every day and there is no time to waste.”