New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks during a Department Of Correction's Tribute To 9/11 Heroes ceremony at Riker's Island in New York City on Friday, September 4, 2026. Getty Images See more of our coverage in your search results.
Add The New York Post on Google Last month Mayor Mamdani conveyed his condolences, and that of the city, to the family of Clarence Woodward, an inmate who passed away on Rikers Island while awaiting trial for the brutal stabbing murder of one man and the injuring of another.
“We do not yet know the cause of death,” the mayor stated, “but we do know that too many New Yorkers have died on Rikers Island. Our administration is fully committed …..(to) closing Rikers Island as quickly as possible.”
The mayor felt compelled to single out this death as a matter requiring his personal attention. Why? Because it subtlety serves his crass political agenda.
Every year in New York City, population 8.5 million, approximately 60,000 people die — about 164 a day. About 2,000 — 5 a day — die of drug overdoses each year. The NYC Department of Health reports that in fiscal year 2025, 634 homeless people died in NYC — about 2 per day. About 600 people a year commit suicide. At the time Mayor Mamdani made his comments, 172 people had been murdered in NYC on his watch. How many of those people’s families received condolences from the mayor?
You would think, listening to the mayor, that people were dying every day on Rikers from mistreatment and neglect. But that is just not true.
In the almost eight years from January 1, 2019, through August 31, 2026, a total of 82 people died in city custody. That is an average of 10 deaths per year. To date in 2026, there have been 7 deaths in city custody, including Woodward. Each one of the other six died from medical complications. Two of them died in hospitals after being transferred from Rikers for medical emergencies, and one died in a holding cell in the Bronx and never even made it to Rikers.
I fully understand that some people may be troubled by my reducing questions of safety on Rikers to cold numbers, but we simply can’t continue to set important public safety policy based on individual incidents and emotional rantings misleadingly used to create false narratives.
So, if 10 people die out of a Rikers population of 6,500, that is one out of every 650 people on Rikers, or about one every 36 days. The Rikers population consists, to a very large degree, of substance abusers, homeless, mentally ill, physically debilitated individuals and repeat criminal offenders. In fact, this is the profile of the city’s jail population as of July 2026, compiled by Mamdani’s own NYC Health and Hospitals Correctional Health Services:
Many inmates suffer from multiple health and mental health issues; thus the total exceeds 100%.
Every death is a tragedy — but given this profile, it is nothing short of remarkable that out of 6,500 inmates, an average of only one in 650 dies each year.
The death rate per year in the city for all residents is 1 in 142. For residents of homeless shelters, it’s 1 in 282. For Unsheltered homeless is 1 in 14 to 1 in 23. For Rikers, it’s 1 in 650.
The bottom line is that, incredible as it may sound, homeless people are statistically safer in Rikers than living on the streets of NYC or in a NYC shelter.
The NYC CHS estimates that 29% (1,885) of the inmates on Rikers were classified as homeless. If they died in city custody at the same rate as the non-incarcerated homeless die on NYC streets (1 in 14), that would be 135 in custody deaths a year just among that 1,885 inmate subgroup.
If the inmates on Rikers died at the same rate as the general population in NYC, it would mean there would be 46 deaths a year. Rikers averages 10.
So why is the mayor so concerned with Woodward’s death? Because he has no legitimate arguments to support closing Rikers, reducing the jail population by another 35% and building smaller jails in residential neighborhoods, rather than rebuilding new jails on Rikers Island.
Just as George Floyd’s horrible death was used at demonize police everywhere, and phony statistics and embellished narratives on other cases were used to paint a distorted picture of the entire criminal justice system, the mayor and his allies are using any death in city custody, from whatever cause, known or unknown, to push their decarceration agenda and demonize the entire corrections system.
Their rhetoric is designed to deflect honest debate about the city’s totally irresponsible city plan to close Rikers Island and build just 4,160 jail cells for a city of 8.5 million, whose jails currently house 6,500 inmates. It is deceptive and reckless.
Maybe the mayor should show some compassion for the family of the man Woodward murdered, or the more than 75,622 victims of crime on his watch so far this year, which is 21% higher than it was pre-bail reform in 2019.
Jim Quinn is a retired career prosecutor in the Queens District Attorney’s Office, where he served for 42 years.
