De Blasio: Clearing court backlog will shrink NYC jail census
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio says fixing bureaucratic backlogs in the courts will reduce the number of people locked up in the troubled Rikers Island jail complex.
City officials announced Tuesday that pre-trial inmates with cases pending more than a year will have a court date scheduled in the next 45 days.
The Rikers inmate population has shrunk by half in the past 20 years to about 10,000. But a few hundred inmates spent more than 270 days waiting for trial there last year.