After years of planning, a new jail bed unit in Bellevue Hospital for seriously ill detainees from Rikers Island has been mostly ready to open since January — but sits empty because jail officials say they don’t have enough officers to operate it, and state inspectors say it is still not safe enough.
The 104-bed Department of Correction outpost unit is nearly double over budget and years late, with a budget that has ballooned from $130 million to $241 million, according to Correctional Health Services (CHS), an arm of NYC Health and Hospitals that provides medical care for detainees.
That breaks down to a little over $2 million per bed — and recreation area — located on almost all of the historic hospital’s second floor…