Infamous jail: New York closes jail island Rikers Island

Tens of thousands of criminals have been imprisoned in the infamous New York Rikers Island prison since the 1930s - now the US East Coast metropolis is about to close the detention center. The city council on Thursday agreed to replace the prison island and three other detention centers by 2026 with four smaller facilities in the districts of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. One day, Rikers Island should be open to the public.

Because of the outdated infrastructure and frequent acts of violence, human rights activists have for years been calling for the closure of the prison complex, which included prominent inmates such as rapper Tupac Shakur and politician Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Time and again, the detention center was discredited by mistreatment of inmates - especially blacks and Hispanics are said to have been affected.

In the 1990s, up to 20,000 people were imprisoned on the prison island, currently there are about 7,000. "The age of mass imprisonment is over," said Mayor Bill de Blasio. According to the plans of the city New York needs due to judicial reforms and falling crime rates in 2026 only room for 3300 prisoners. The costs of the restructuring are estimated at the equivalent of almost eight billion euros.

The city government promises better conditions of detention in the new facilities, as well as making them safer and easier to reach for the prisoners' relatives.

The decision also provoked opposition. Criticism was, inter alia, to De Blasio's plan to replace Rikers Island with centrally located prisons with significantly fewer cells. Other opponents of the plan demanded to use the approved money rather for the fight against crime causes.