NEW YORK — Two people detained at the Rikers Island jail complex in New York have died in the past week, the first deaths under Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who faces a 2027 deadline to close the troubled facility.

On Wednesday a 39-year-old man was found at George R. Vierno Center on the island in need of medical aid, according to the Department of Correction. The man, Barry Cozart, was pronounced dead at 11:33 a.m. after staff performed CPR, the agency said.

On Saturday, another man being held at Eric M. Taylor Center on Rikers was in need of medical care and was transported to Elmhurst Hospital. The man, John Price, 49, was pronounced dead Sunday morning.

The medical examiner’s office has not yet announced the cause of death for either man.

By the start of April last year, five people had died in custody or right after being released from Rikers. The toll rose to 15 by the end of the year. Five people died in 2024.

Mamdani and Stanley Richards, the commissioner of corrections, face a slate of mounting issues in the city’s jail system, including meeting a legal deadline to close Rikers before August 2027. The two must also navigate a new leadership structure that has stripped them of direct control of the jail.

The deaths point to a continued failure of supervision, security and accountability at Rikers, said Elizabeth Glazer, the founder of Vital City, an urban think tank, and a former criminal justice adviser under Mayor Bill de Blasio. At least 100 people have died there since 2015, she said.

That year, a class-action lawsuit, known as Nunez v. City of New York, was settled and required that the jails be overseen by a court-appointed monitor who would issue regular reports on conditions but would wield no direct power to effect change. The arrangement was meant to curb the violence and dysfunction at the complex.

Under a law passed by the City Council in 2019, Rikers must be shut by August 2027, though the city is unlikely to meet that deadline. Progress has been slow toward building four borough-based jails that were intended to replace Rikers.

Mamdani also must deal with a growing jail population. When the law was passed, there were about 7,000 people in city jails. That number dropped to under 4,000 during the pandemic but has returned to nearly 7,000.

The mayor announced both deaths on the social site X. “Rikers must close, and we will pursue every avenue to do so as quickly as possible,” Mamdani said in one post.

Last year, the federal judge overseeing the jails as a result of the lawsuit, Laura Taylor Swain, said officials had fallen into an “unfortunate cycle” in which initiatives were abandoned and then restarted under new administrations. She stripped the city of control of the jails.

Swain named Nicholas Deml, a former CIA officer, to take control this year, replacing the mayor as the main person to make major decisions. Deml will work with Richards, the first formerly incarcerated person to lead the Correction Department, and a federal monitor who has been in place for more than a decade.

“It is too soon for this administration to have fixed those primary causes,” Glazer said. “But the recent appointment of a receiver who has executive powers beyond any commissioner, as well as an able commissioner, and the announcement of the death by the mayor himself signals a willingness to take urgent action.”

Darren Mack, co-director of Freedom Agenda, a nonprofit that works for individuals and communities affected by incarceration in New York City, said the complex must be closed.

“Rikers Island is a hellhole,” he said. “It will continue to kill and harm our neighbors and family members until it’s shut down.”

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Hurubie Meko/Karsten Moran
c. 2026 The New York Times Company