Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Tuesday announced the opening of a new, quarter billion hospital unit for city inmates complete with specialty care and access to “therapeutic settings.”
The 104-bed facility at Bellevue Hospital will provide access to oncology, cardiology and neurology, and will be the first of three “outposted therapeutic housing units” for prisoners — in what City Hall claimed marked a “major step” in shuttering the troubled Rikers Island jail complex.
“Opening this new clinical facility at Bellevue Hospital is how we begin to close Rikers Island — not with promises, but with action,” Mamdani proclaimed.
The project has a $241 million price tag after years of delay, according to The City, which first reported that the unit, located on Bellevue’s second floor, was finally opening.
The additional units will open at Woodhull Hospital and North Central Bronx Hospital, adding another combined 236 additional beds, according to the mayor’s office.
An estimated 20% of the over 7,000 prisoners at Rikers Island have serious mental illnesses and facilities are operating at the highest level seen in “more than a decade,” according to City Council testimony from Mamdani’s Department of Correction Commissioner Stanley Richards.
“For too long, people with serious medical needs have been left to suffer in a system that was never designed to care for them,” he said.
