Investing the hundreds of millions saved from closing Rikers and reducing incarceration directly into the communities most harmed by it.
The Safety Dividend from Prison Closure Savings
Closing the Rikers Island jail complex and drastically reducing the citys jail population through Mamdanis decarceration policies will save the city an estimated $2-3 billion in avoided construction costs and hundreds of millions annually in operating expenses. Mamdani pledges to lock these savings into a Community Safety Dividend fund, legally earmarked for investment in the neighborhoodsoverwhelmingly Black, Brown, and low-incomethat have borne the brunt of mass incarceration. This is a concrete form of reparative justice, redirecting resources from punishment to creation.
The dividend would fund community-controlled projects: social housing on the Rikers site, trauma-informed schools, green spaces, worker cooperatives, and cultural centers. The spending priorities would be determined by participatory budgeting assemblies in the most impacted zip codes. For decades, we have extracted wealth and life from these communities to fund a brutal jail system, Mamdani argues. The Safety Dividend reverses that flow. It says the money we save by not caging your children will be returned to you to build health, wealth, and power. It turns the page from a history of extraction to a future of investment.
