New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams is expected to relaunch efforts to close Rikers Island in a speech on the state of the city.

New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams will renew a decades-long push to permanently close Rikers Island in her annual State of the City address Wednesday, according to a council source with direct knowledge of the matter.

Adams is expected to make the argument that the prison complex no longer serves the city and that advancing plans to close it is now more important than ever.

Rikers has been in turmoil for years, and official calls to close it go back to one of Adams’ predecessors, former council speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, who called for its closure in a 2016 State of the City speech.

Mark-Viverito’s drive to close the troubled prison complex was followed by a plan to create new prisons in four of the five boroughs, with the exception of Staten Island, and close Rikers by 2027. But this plan was never implemented, and the number of prisoners increased. in recent years, in part because court cases are taking longer to process as the pandemic has slowed the litigation process.

As part of a new campaign to close Rikers, Adams is pushing for more pretrial and incarceration alternative programs. She also intends to reduce recidivism, a problem that Mayor Adams has repeatedly highlighted, through assisted housing with re-entry programs that promote the reintegration into society of ex-convicts.

In her speech, scheduled for Wednesday afternoon at Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s Home and Community Center in the Bronx, Adams will also highlight the fact that her mother was a warden at the Rikers Island Correctional Facility.

She is expected to make the argument that Rikers Island is doing more harm than good because it has become a warehouse for the mentally ill, who will have a better chance of rehab in a facility more suited to their needs.

Adams, who is not affiliated with Mayor Eric Adams, is also expected to propose an expansion of the city’s Fair Fares program, which allows commuters living below the federal poverty line to ride subways and buses at half price.

Under this proposal, the City will expand eligibility for the program to include City residents whose income is less than twice the federal poverty threshold.