What Rikers Island Actually Costs, Per Person, Per Year

A New York City public defender put a question to her followers recently that almost nobody gets asked directly: do you know how much you're already paying to hold someone at Rikers Island who hasn't been convicted of anything? Her answer, in the moment, was a number pulled from memory. We went and checked the city's own figures. The real numbers are still damning, they're just not identical to what she said on camera, and the difference matters if this is going to hold up.

What it actually costs, per person, per year

In 2023, the city spent $507,000 per person incarcerated on an annual basis, according to NYC Comptroller Brad Lander's July 2024 report, Ensuring Timely Trials. That's up from $182,000 in 2013. Two years earlier, the number was even higher: $556,539 per person for FY2021, or $1,525 a day, per then-Comptroller Scott Stringer's office. So the honest correction to "it's probably worse now" is: it actually came down some between 2021 and 2023, according to the city's own accounting, though it's still more than half a million dollars a year for one person.

Multiply that by the people actually there

As of July 1, 2025, DOC housed 7,602 people, according to the Comptroller's monthly DOC Dashboard. At $507,000 a person, that's roughly $3.85 billion a year to run the city's jails, using the two most recent figures the city itself has published. The exact population moves every month; the Comptroller's office updates it monthly, and it's worth checking the current figure directly rather than relying on any single snapshot, including this one. The public defender's video cited 6,461 people held as of August 5, 2026. We could not independently confirm that specific number against a dated Comptroller or Board of Correction release by the time this was published, so treat it as her stated figure, not ours, until it's confirmed against the dashboard directly.

Almost everyone paying for that stay hasn't been convicted of anything

This is the part of her argument the numbers actually back up, even if her exact percentage was off. As of August 2023, 5,403 people, or 87% of the jail population, were detained pretrial, per the Comptroller's office, up from 82% in January 2022. Pretrial means exactly what it sounds like: no conviction, no plea, presumed innocent under the law, and still sitting in a cell because they couldn't post bail or because their case hasn't moved. The public defender's video suggested that number was closer to 98 or 99%. It isn't, based on the city's most recent published figures, but 87% is still the overwhelming majority of a jail complex costing half a million dollars a person a year.

What that money is actually buying

Fifteen people died in New York City Department of Correction custody in 2025, according to the Vera Institute of Justice's tracking of deaths in NYC jails, which documents each death by name, date, and facility. That confirms the number the public defender cited. Most of the people who died were, like most of the population overall, awaiting trial. Some had been held for months. One man, Edwin Ramos, died hours before he was set to be released.

Money isn't the only cost here, but it's the cost most people never sit down and calculate. Half a million dollars a year, per person, for a system that's holding the overwhelming majority of its population without a conviction, in conditions that killed fifteen people in a single year. That's what the public defender was actually pointing at, even where her specific numbers needed a second look.

If a low bail number isn't the thing keeping someone in custody, a separate mechanism might be; see how a bail source hearing can hold someone on bail they could otherwise pay for one of the ways that happens.