The replace-Rikers fantasy ignores the real problem

The 19th detainee death at Rikers Island this year (after 16 in 2021) is a clear signal that the jail’s culture needs changing — yet far too many of the city’s political powers are focused on the impossible plan to replace Rikers entirely with four borough-based facilities, or (worse yet) on ham-handed efforts to write rules to somehow fix the troubled system.

Correction Commissioner Louis Molina is bent on changing that culture of violence and managerial dysfunction, even as he grapples with understaffing and the complex’s physical deterioration. That inmates keep dying of drug overdoses, suicide and at the hands of other inmates shows he still has a long way to go.

One good sign: A federal judge just OK’d circumventing civil-service laws, so the city can hire wardens from outside the Corrections Department.

That’ll let Molina bring in more professionals with demonstrated expertise and steeped in modern jail-management — and end the chaos left after many correction officers called in sick for much of the pandemic, forcing those willing to show up to work triple shifts.

Last week, another guard pleaded guilty to official misconduct for lying and filing a false report when he was caught not showing up for work. Last month, a now-ex-Rikers guard confessed to taking bribes and sneaking contraband — marijuana and K2 — into city jails.

For years, then-Mayor bill de Blasio and jail reformers insisted that reducing the inmate population would make the jails more manageable. In reality, it hasn’t. And the allied drive to replace Rikers is at best a distraction, encouraging poor maintenance of the jails the city actually has and banishing the far more practical solution of putting up new buildings on the island.

Not to mention that planned new jails in four boroughs would only hold a total population of 3,300, when the city’s now detaining about 6,000 and expects to hit 7,000 by 2024, per Molina’s testimony to the City Council last Tuesday.

Even in the unlikely event that all four new jails get built, shuttering Rikers would require springing thousands sent there despite the laxity of the no-bail laws.

Meanwhile, the council pushes bright ideas like completely ending solitary confinement. Far better to figure out how to clear the backlog in the city’s court system — and how to speed up Molina’s reforms.

And the entire political establishment needs to drop the replace-Rikers fantasy.