By Dustin Brown
Releasing former Rikers Island inmates at Queens Plaza once they have served their time has been a standard practice of the city Department of Corrections for more than two decades.
But city and borough officials have begun to re-examine the policy, which has long been derided by nearby residents and is now considered a potential threat to Long Island City’s development into a new central business district.
City Councilman Eric Gioia (D-Woodside), who has spearheaded the efforts to change the Rikers Island drop-off policy, said he began tackling the issue shortly after taking office in January.
“This is something people in the neighborhood have talked about literally since I was a child,” he said in a phone interview Tuesday. “It’s unfair to the families that live in the neighborhood, it’s unfair to the businesses in the neighborhood, and it’s unfair to the inmates who have just won their liberty. It’s a failed policy that really serves no one’s interests.”
Former inmates who have finished their jail terms at Rikers Island are loaded onto a bus every weekday morning and taken to Queens Plaza, where they are dropped off around 5 a.m. and given a two-fare Metrocard.
“They’re at that point free citizens,” said Tom Antenen, a spokesman for the city Department of Corrections. “It’s incumbent of us to discharge them from our custody in an expeditious manner.”
Antenen described the current location as “the closest major transportation hub of its kind to Rikers Island,” and indeed the area is served by two subway stations within a block of each other — Queensboro Plaza and Queens Plaza, which together carry seven subway lines: the N, W, E, G, R, V and No. 7.
Often described as the gateway to Queens, the area consists of a wide commercial boulevard with numerous lanes of traffic heading to and from the Queensboro Bridge and a large elevated subway structure overhead.
Although he said his agency is considering alternative drop-off locations, Antenen stressed that the current practice represents the most practical means of discharging inmates and has not caused any criminal activity in the area. On most days between 30 and 60 prisoners are released, although as many as 90 are dropped off on Fridays, Antenen said.
All of the inmates at Rikers Island are serving sentences of one year or less for misdemeanor crimes, such as low-level drug possession or shoplifting, and none are violent offenders, Antenen said.
Queens Borough President Helen Marshall held a meeting last Thursday at the urging of Gioia to discuss possible changes to the policy, gathering corrections officials with a wide collection of area leaders to share their thoughts on the problem.
Marshall has asked the Department of Corrections to “come up with several alternative sites,” according to her spokesman, Dan Andrews.
“We would reconvene with a smaller group and hopefully we will be able to resolve this issue,” Andrews said.
The session followed two others held earlier this winter between Department of Corrections officials and MetLife, a corporation that recently moved hundreds of employees to a renovated loft building that stares directly at the elevated subway station and sits feet away from the drop-off site.
The company recently commissioned a study to examine other possible locations for the drop-off, but officials from MetLife would not comment on that or their involvement in the efforts to change the practice.
Queens Plaza sits at the heart of a 37-block area in Long Island City that was rezoned last year to encourage its development into the city’s next central business district, and the arrival of MetLife is seen by many as a sign of that vision finally being realized.
But the neighborhood also has a history of prostitution and drug dealing, which police have being aggressively cracking down on of late, and many believe the continued practice of dropping former inmates off there may make it difficult for the area to break away from its seedy image.
“This is not a new complaint, but it has been highlighted by MetLife moving into the area and perception is everything,” said Joseph Conley, the chairman of Community Board 2 who discussed the Rikers Island concerns at the board’s public meeting last Thursday.
Conley said community complaints about 15 years ago had prompted the Department of Corrections to move the drop-off to the front of the courthouse on Jackson Avenue, which is also well served by subways. But when the nearby Citibank tower opened, the location reverted to Queens Plaza.
Possible alternatives tossed around recently include dropping off former inmates at transit hubs in their boroughs of residence, or alternating the drop-off site to spread the burden around different locations.
But Antenen said such suggestions would be difficult to carry out.
“There’s cost factors you have to look at,” he said. “I think there’s a lot of redundancy as well as expense in taking something that is a single focus and making it multiple steps.”
Gioia, who will be part of a small working group to resolve the issue, said he is confident a solution will be devised “in a way that results in better treatment for the inmates … and will fulfill the dream of people citywide that enables Long Island City to have the renaissance it deserves.”
Reach reporter Dustin Brown by e-mail at Timesledger@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 154.
