Brian Ler on WNYC, Rikers Island, you know, has been called a lot of things besides a city jail,

a crisis, a legal emergency, a national embarrassment, a moral failure. Under the law,

it's supposed to be closed by the end of August 27, but that legal deadline is now effectively

acknowledged as impossible to meet because the four borough-based jails that are supposed to

replace it presumably won't be ready in time. The Brooklyn

Borough Base Jail did just hit a major construction milestone last week with the last

structural beam anchored atop the building from what I've read, but the Manhattan Jail and

Chinatown, for example, isn't expected to be finished until 2032,

five years past the legal deadline, and the total projected cost of all four facilities has

ballooned to $13.7 billion, and the city has to find that money.

Meanwhile, conditions on Rikers remain dire by anecdote and official government findings.

You know, it's under federal receivership now, among other things.

Into all of this walks Dana Kaplan, Mayor Mamdani's newly appointed, Close Rikers'zar.

Not simply Rikers'ar, but the close Rikers'ar. She helped design the original blueprint to close Rikers,

and now she's been handed the job of actually finishing it. Dana Kaplan joins us now. Welcome to WNYC.

Thank you so much for coming on with us right after your appointment. Yeah, thank you for having me.

And listeners, we invite you in on this.

Do you have a personal connection to Rikers Island?

Are you a family member who's made that trip out to the island to visit someone?

In addition to, of course, if you've been there yourself, are you a current or former corrections officer, a lawyer who represents clients there?

Anything, 212-433, WNYC, maybe you live in one of the

neighborhoods getting one of the new borough-based jails. We know there's a lot of controversy in

...