As the City Council prepares to back Mayor Bill de Blasio’s bid to shutter Rikers Island’s prison complex in favor of building four new borough-based jails, a Council committee on Thursday green-lighted plans to ensure the island is never used to house inmates again.

The Council’s land use committee voted 11-2 with two abstentions in favor of a measure aimed at designating Rikers a “public place” so anyone can easily access it and ensuring the island won’t be used to incarcerate individuals.

The plan, which the full Council is expected to ratify, would still have to undergo a lengthy public review process, and the proposed changes wouldn’t kick in until the end of the 2026 to coincide with the mayor’s timeline for shuttering scandal-scarred Rikers and building new jails in each borough but Staten Island by 2026.

“Today, we’re taking a major step in addressing the new ‘Jim Crow,’ which is mass incarceration,” said Queens Councilman Donovan Richards, comparing repeated complaints of prison mistreatment on Rikers to enforced racial segregation laws of the Old South.

He added he supports the measure because inmates are “living in a hellhole” on Rikers and it’s the Council’s “obligation” to stop it.

However, Queens Councilman Barry Grodenchik, who also supports the concept of closing Rikers, said he had to abstain backing the new proposal because he’s “concerned” the city won’t be able to get the new jails up and running by the end of 2026 based on the suspect track record of New York’s construction industry.

Queens Councilman Daneek Miller also opted to abstain while Bronx Councilman Andy King and Brooklyn Councilman Chaim Deutsch voted against the plan. King said opposed it because he believes it doesn’t solve larger problems with the criminal justice system while Deutsch was mum on his opposition.

The committee’s action comes as critics over de Blasio’s plan continues to mount, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The socialist darling ripped it on social media last week by claiming the mayor has no safeguards in place to ensure Rikers actually closes once the new jails are up.

Council members insisted Ocasio-Cortez played no role in the new plan.

It also comes on the heels of a team of lower-Manhattan architects-turned-activists unveiling an 11th-hour alternative plan last week aimed at halting Council support of de Blasio’s push to overhaul the city jail system. Their plan calls for razing existing jails on Rikers and building a new college-campus-like prison complex on the island with plenty of outdoor recreational space and other services for inmates.

De Blasio hopes his plan will reduce the city’s jail population to 4,000. There are currently about 7,000 in the jail system, compared to 9,400 in 2017.

The City Council is set to vote on it Oct. 17.