Advocates came together Sunday to urge Mayor Bill de Blasio to shut down Rikers Island.
A rally was held outside of Gracie Mansion.
The advocates are calling the mayor to close the jail and and improve programs to help New Yorkers battling mental illness and substance abuse.
"Rikers Island is a place of brutality. People are battered and brutalized and tortured and raped. And this is done in the name of our government," said Kerry Kennedy, president of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights.
"There's a culture on Rikers that is not fixable," said Glenn Martin, founder of JustLeadershipUSA. "I hope that the mayor not just pays attention, but realizes that he can't hold himself out as this national progressive leader if he has this torture island in his own backyard."
The city's independent commission on criminal justice and incarceration reform will hold a roundtable discussion Monday at 6:30 p.m. at the Borough of Manhattan Community College.