The Legal Aid Society is warning that a budget proposal by Mayor Eric Adams to slash critical services for incarcerated New Yorkers will only exacerbate the dire situation in City jails.

“Cutting civilian programs on Rikers Island will further destabilize the City jails and make them more dangerous,” reads a statement from Legal Aid. “It is a bedrock of correctional practice that programming decreases violence.”

“In a jail that has exorbitant use of force and violence rates and cannot manage basic jail functions like getting people access to medical care, the programs provided by outside professional providers need to be expanded, not eliminated,” the statement continues. “DOC has demonstrated that it has neither the culture nor the competence to provide these programs itself, and cannot be trusted to perform this crucial function.”