By Sasha Gonzales
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The city’s Department of Correction will be shutting down the Otis Bantum Correctional Center on Rikers Island – historically one of the jail complex’s most troubled – before the end of the year, officials said.
In a letter made public this week, Commissioner Cynthia Brann and Chief of Department Hazel Jennings said the agency was taking advantage of “the significant reduction in our current and projected jail population to continue closing older facilities that pose the most pressing administrative and structural problems.”
The prisoners held at the 35-year-old OBC facility will be transferred to the island’s other jails, which are being phased out in advance of their replacement by smaller borough jails, yet to be constructed.