By MATTHEW MUSOLINO
Former New York City Executive Board of Corrections Director Martha King warned the City Council that replacing Rikers Island prisons with the City’s Borough-Based Jail program will not solve the crisis alone.
King testified during the November 9 City Council meeting of the Committee on Rules, Privileges, Elections, Standards and Ethics.
King is the council’s nominee for Director of the Board of Corrections and held the position from 2015-2019. King currently serves as the program director for Educational Urban Affairs at Charles H. Webster Foundation. The current Interim Executive Director and General Counsel is Melissa Cintron Hernandez.
King spoke about the borough-based system, which is designed to replace Rikers Island.
The closing of the well known jail was announced on October 17, 2019 when the City Council voted and approved its closure. Borough-Based Jails is intended to be a system of smaller, more humane facilities. Construction began in June of 202l with the plan of building four jails in every borough except Staten Island.
The new facilities will be the model for direct supervision housing. Each housing unit will be equipped with ample programming, support services, and medical spaces. The goal is to allow inmates to maintain connections to families and service providers.
King claimed that the borough-based strategy is good in practice but won’t solve all of the problems in the jails. She said she is concerned over “whether those new jails will deliver on the promise of more safety and better conditions for staff and people who are in custody,” King said.
King also said the city needs to work very closely with the court system on speeding up case processing.
Rikers was projected to reach closure originally in August 2027. But the program has experienced delays, and the first borough-based jail is not due to open until 2029.
Council Member Linda Lee said Rikers Island is now the third largest mental health institution in the country.
From a recent study by Kellyann Bock & Michael Rempel of Data Collaborative for Justice, as of February 2025, Correctional Health Services found that 21% of the City’s jail population had a serious mental illness.
“That’s unprecedented,” King said. “The numbers have just been going up. And so we need a focused plan to have other options for people with serious mental illness who are not being served well by being in jail.”
King said she supports Local Law 42, which bans prolonged solitary confinement in city jail. The law was enacted by the City Council in 2024. “There’s extensive evidence that shows the serious physical and psychological harm caused by solitary, and at the same time, we don’t have evidence that solitary deterred violence made the jail safer,” King said.
King said that inmates need to have access to recreation in order to make jails safer. When violence occurs, inmates should be separated. “De-escalation among anyone involved in violence is critical,” she stated.
NYC Board of Corrections is responsible for the inspection of all institutions and facilities under the jurisdiction of the Department of Correction. The board establishes minimum standards for the care, custody, correction, treatment, supervision, and discipline of all persons held or confined under the jurisdiction of the department.
“The BOC has a remarkable history of reforming the city’s jails and establishing the elements of safer conditions, including access to the courts and legal services, visits, daily showers, the practice of religion, health, and mental health care,” King said.
King criticized the board’s dysfunctional supervision and outdated paper-based systems, which she said leads to management not knowing where staff is deployed at any given time.
King previously served as executive director of the Board of Corrections from 2015 to 2019. During her tenure, she oversaw the development of the board’s first sexual abuse prevention regulation in 25 years. She also established a public monitoring system for injury sustained by individuals in custody, advanced data transparency initiatives, and advised the council on legislation related to the board’s oversight responsibilities.
If appointed to the BOC, Martha King would serve the remainder of a six-year term ending on February 1, 2029.