Former Rikers worker says DOC locks mentally ill detainees inside cells for weeks

Justyna Rzewinski, who recently left her job as a social worker with Correctional Health Services, the agency that provides healthcare to the city’s detainees, told the city’s Board of Correction during its monthly meeting on Tuesday that the Department of Correction frequently “deadlocks” detainees with mental illness inside cells as a form of punishment.

The alleged practice, which the DOC did not confirm or deny on Tuesday, would appear to be a violation of the BOC’s rules that govern the rights of detainees on Rikers Island, a jail complex where half of the incarcerated population has been diagnosed with a mental illness.

Archived at https://ghostarchive.org/archive/0982c