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“Not only should the administration strive to make New York City a place where all people can meet their basic needs, but Mamdani’s team must also work to bring alternatives to incarceration to scale, so they are the new default while jail becomes a last resort.”
As Mayor Zohran Mamdani takes office, New York City stands at a crossroads. For decades, “public safety” in this city has been synonymous with policing, punishment, and incarceration. But New Yorkers know better: real safety isn’t achieved through handcuffs or jail cells—it’s built through stable access to affordable housing, food, health care, transportation, and other life essentials.
Mamdani’s campaign centered on affordability, rightly arguing that when people can meet their basic needs, the entire city becomes safer. But the incoming mayor cannot avoid inheriting a public safety infrastructure that, for several years now, has doubled down on punitive responses that have devastated Black, Latine, and other working class neighborhoods across the city.
The number of people incarcerated on Rikers Island still hovers over 7,000 while NYPD arrests continue to climb under current NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch. In the first two months of last year alone, for example, the number of people put through the system for minor drug possession spiked by 59 percent, while the number of people held to arraignment on noncriminal violations jumped by 188 percent. This reflects how “public safety” has been used to justify the criminalization of poverty, mental illness, and addiction—especially in neighborhoods where state neglect and law enforcement presence have long gone hand in hand.
And this is exactly why Mamdani’s proposal to create a Department of Community Safety (DCS) is so critical. Even the framing—community safety—signals a shift from punishment to prevention, and from surveillance to support. For far too long, New York’s jails have functioned as warehouses for chronically unhoused people and those living with mental and substance use disorders. The DCS has the potential to redefine safety as something built through care, housing, health, and stability—not through cycles of arrest and incarceration that have harmed marginalized communities.
And alternatives to incarceration (ATIs) will play a critical role in this shift. As leaders in the NYC ATI and Reentry Coalition, a network of 12 community-based providers that already serves more than 30,000 New Yorkers each year, we at the Coalition have seen firsthand the transformative impact such an approach yields. Moreover, decades of research confirms that ATIs not only increase overall desistance from crime, reduce homelessness, improve health outcomes, and boost employment rates, but they save taxpayers millions. For every $1 invested in community-based alternatives, savings between $3.46 and $5.54 are generated. Despite these proven benefits, ATI and reentry services remain chronically under-resourced and undervalued.
This is where DCS must step in. ATIs and reentry services must be adequately funded to truly ensure safe communities across the five boroughs. Not only should the administration strive to make New York City a place where all people can meet their basic needs, but Mamdani’s team must also work to bring ATIs to scale, so they are the new default while jail becomes a last resort.
As the nation’s largest city, New York is uniquely positioned to lead in building a holistic, human-centered approach to public safety. By coordinating resources across city agencies and committing to long-term investments that go to prevention and community wellbeing rather than policing and incarceration, the new administration can truly realize its vision of community safety—and begin to rectify the decades of disinvestment and over-policing that has decimated neighborhoods primarily home to Black and brown New Yorkers.
We have an opportunity now to make real the simple promise that our neighborhoods will care for, not criminalize, one another—as long as Mayor Mamdani pairs his affordability agenda with a hard shift away from punishment and incarceration and towards compassion and support. Doing so will make New York City a national model—proving that investing in people and repairing past harm is how we build lasting safety.
Jonathan McLean is CEO at The Center for Alternative Sentencing & Employment Services (CASES), and Megan French-Marcelin is the senior director of New York State policy at the Legal Action Center (LAC).