Brian McFadden has owned Bee’s Famous Barbershop on East 138th Street and Cypress Avenue for 29 years. His shop sits a few blocks away from where New York City plans to build a new jail, one of four borough sites in development to complete its plan to close Rikers Island.
“Why here?” McFaden asked in an interview with The Mott Haven Herald. “How about some libraries? Maybe a park. We have a men’s shelter on the block. So now, across from the men’s shelter, they are going to put a jail. Is that telling people in the neighborhood something?”
In February, a 2,200-bed men’s migrant shelter opened abruptly in the neighborhood without community input, sparking backlash from residents, with many arguing the Bronx is already overloaded with shelters. A 2021 report by the city’s Department of Homeless Services counted 129 shelters in the Bronx– more than Queens and Brooklyn.
It’s just the latest attempt by the city to build a jail in the South Bronx despite community blowback. In 2008 the city gave up on plans to erect a jail on the Hunts Point waterfront after numerous protests by well-organized local groups.
Nonetheless, pre-construction planning and design renderings are already underway for the Bronx jail.
The city’s Department of Design and Department of Corrections are working with Transformative Reform Group (TRG) to construct the jail on E. 141st Street in Mott Haven. TRG is comprised of two firms: a Manhattan-based firm, Sciame Construction, and a Texas firm, Sullivan Land Services Co.
City records show the firm has a $6 million stipend that expires in September 2025. Other records indicate a $2.97 billion contract between TRG and the Department of Design and Construction, which expires in November 2031.
Staff from Urbahn Architects, the design team working with Transformative Reform Group, outlined their design goals and plans to Bronx Community 1 Board Members in March.
“We hope this building will be an inspirational place for all who are there,” Lawrence Gutterman, an associate principal at Urbahn Architects, told the committee.
Gutterman said the jail will fit 1,040 beds for men, 200 therapeutic beds designated for incarcerated people with mental health issues. An average cell size of 75 square feet, about the size of a small bedroom, includes a bed, desk, toilet, and sink, he added.
Designers are also aiming for a designated space for social service agencies within the jail, a lobby area, a recreational space, and a 40,000-square-foot retail space separate from the jail, according to design documents. There will also be 120 parking spots dedicated to city vehicles, officials said.
The goal is “to design a place that is secure, that is humane, and subscribes to the best principles of the current Correctional practice,” Gutterman told the Board 1’s Economic Development and Land Use/Zoning and Housing Committee.
Dalourny Nemorin, who serves on the Committee, said she’s more concerned with the social services offered to the people incarcerated than the jail’s appearance.
“I don’t care about how pretty the building is, I’m just more concerned about [whether] people are going to come out better and more supported,” Nemorin said in an interview with the Herald.
The effort to close Rikers and build smaller local jails has lingered for decades — and promises to take several more years until their completion.
Bronx residents previously protested against the location, arguing it should be closer to the borough courthouse.
Still, officials like Gutterman said their goal is to build something that is an “asset to its community and make a meaningful connection.”
Gutterman did not respond to requests for comment.
As plans for the jail move forward, McFadden said he wants residents and local business owners in the process.
“You may not get the opposition that you think you will,” McFadden added. “If the people are not involved with it, what good is it?”
The next Community Design Workshop for the Bronx Jail is Monday, June 23, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at SoBro Social on the second floor of 229 Bruckner Blvd.
In addition to the design-build team, representatives from multiple city agencies, including the Department of Corrections, the Department of Design and Construction, and the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, are expected to present the latest design updates of the jail. The workshop will also have time for community members to ask questions.
Currently, the entrance of the jail will be on the corner of E. 142nd Street and Southern Boulevard. The design renderings also include outdoor public seating along E. 141st Street, bike racks, and drop-off and pick-up zones.
The jail will be less than two miles away on E. 161st Street, where people detained will face trial.
Alexandria Maldonaldo, assistant commissioner at Strategic Initiatives for the Department of Corrections, and one of the overseers of the borough jails planning project, told community board members the department is creating a transportation plan for incarcerated people to travel to court that will have “minimal contact with the public.”
At the same time, she noted that an incarcerated person can be held in a jail that is not in the same borough as their case.
“We will strive to keep individuals close to their family, but that might not always be where your case is,” Maldonaldo said. “So there may be additional transport to other courthouses throughout the five boroughs.”
Maldonaldo told Board 1 the DOC plans to hire 900 correctional officers to work at the Bronx jail. When asked by The Mott Haven Herald, the DOC’s press office couldn’t confirm how many COs, nurses, therapists, or other staff members were going to be hired at the facility.
“The designs for the BX Facility are not complete, so we cannot yet determine the exact number of staff who will be assigned to the facility, and we continue to work toward maximizing staff efficiencies through the design and operationalization of all the new jails,’ DOC press officials said.
Nemorin is calling for the city to prioritize hiring more behavioral specialists, social workers, nurses, and therapists over correctional officers.
“If we’re going to put 3 billion dollars into something, what is the return on investment if they come out more traumatized, more disenfranchised, more lost?” Nemorin said. “If we’re going to continue to jail people, at least we can try to change the outcome.”
On May 13, federal Judge Laura Swain ruled that a third party would need to oversee Rikers Island and report directly to the court. In a 77-page decision, Swain said the city government has “repeatedly and consistently failed to remediate the violations of the federal rights of incarcerated people.”
It’s the latest development in the city’s prolonged saga to permanently close Rikers, after violence perpetrated by correctional guards and detainees alike, criticism from civil rights organizations, investigations by government and media outlets, and numerous calls to close down the jail system.
In 2019, New York City committed to closing Rikers Island and replacing the poorly maintained jail with smaller jails in Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and the Bronx.
The idea was that smaller jails in the city’s boroughs would make it easier for families to visit their loved ones and attorneys to meet with their clients.
And that being nestled into neighborhoods would provide increased oversight, in hopes of preventing the violence and cruelty that have become synonymous with Rikers.
But the city is far behind on its August 2027 legally mandated deadline for closure, according to a March 2025 report by the Independent Rikers Commission.
The jail is set to be completed by 2031 and built where the old Lincoln Hospital stood. Before it was Lincoln Hospital, it was the Lincoln School for Nurses, a privately endowed school for Black women, opened at that location in 1898. In the later years, the site served as a tow pound for the NYPD.
Rikers Island’s Troubled History
It’s been five years since Bronx native Tamara Carter heard her son, Brandon Rodriguez’s voice.
“He was a dancer. He was an eater, He just loved my cooking,” Carter said, reminiscing. Brandon Rodriguez died on August 10, 2021. He was the ninth person to die at Rikers Island in 2021 and one of 17 at the end of the year, according to Department of Corrections records.
NYC Corrections officers found Rodriguez unresponsive inside a shower pen with his shirt tied around his neck, according to their 2022 report on in-custody suicides and drug-related deaths. Rodriguez had a history of depression and anxiety, according to his mother.
His mental health conditions were also noted by officers during his intake process, after he was detained after being arrested over an alleged domestic violence incident, city records show.
In his five days at Rikers, Rodriguez was placed in the general population and was supposed to have a mental health follow-up appointment with the detention healthcare provider, Correctional Health Services, records show.
Rodriguez is one of 66 people who have died awaiting trial at Rikers Island since 2019. In 2022, 19 people died. Nine people died in 2023 and five in 2024.
This year, five people have died so far, according to NYC Comptroller Brad Lander’s Office Dashboard, which tracks records from the Department of Corrections and the Mayor’s Management Reports.
In addition to the alarming death rate, the population at Rikers has wavered over the years. Nearly 14,000 were held at Rikers in 2007, one of the highest populations the pre-trial facilities had seen since 2001.
The number dipped to 9,790 people detained in 2016. The island’s lowest population was 4,921 people in 2021. In April 2025, there were 7,095 people in the city’s custody, according to Comptroller Lander’s Dashboard.
In March, Mayor Adams admitted the city would not meet the deadline for closing Rikers.
But closing Rikers can’t come fast enough for Carter. “The five stages of grief I haven’t been through yet, but right now I’m mad,” Carter said.
That grief, anger, and an impulse to shield other families from the pain she knows are why she wants to see Rikers Island closed. Carter says she joined the jail reform group, the Freedom Agenda, to pursue this goal.
“With Rikers, it’s a huge task; it’s a whole day of a visit,” she said. “It’s a toll on families. I think the borough-based jails, of course, are not going to be wholesome, but I’m hoping they will be different.”
Sarita Daftary and Edwin Santana are organizers with the Freedom Agenda, a grassroots organization that works with people and communities impacted by incarceration. They are part of a coalition movement to close Rikers and replace it with borough jails, as part of a larger effort to decrease the city’s jail population.
“It’s not that we are building more jails; it’s going from 14 jails to four jails,” Santana said.
Part of that advocacy is pushing for more therapeutic beds in the borough jails, which would mean incarcerated people will have a medical professional within reach. At the same time, a February 2025 report by the Correctional Health Services shows 21 percent of the population had a serious mental illness.
“It means that people who need a therapeutic setting most can have that as their regular experience,” Daftary said. “The clinician right there on the unit, and that’s really important for that access to care.”
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