Unless you have been living under a rock, you are aware that the City Council passed the Mayor’s Rikers Island closure plan. The island will be decommissioned as of 2026 after 4 new borough jails are constructed in Queens, Brooklyn, Manhattan and the Bronx. The height of the Queens facility was lowered from 27 to 19 stories in order to gain the approval of Council Member Karen Koslowitz, whose district includes the proposed Kew Gardens site. A bunch of other concessions that the city can wriggle out of was thrown in to sweeten the deal. The dumbest thing about this whole deal is that a last-minute prediction of only needing 3,300 beds was announced. Originally, the city projected it would need 5,000 beds to handle the population after reforms are enacted in January.