Former Rikers worker says DOC locks mentally ill detainees inside cells for weeks — Queens Daily Eagle
queenseagle.com
Detainees with mental health issues are sometimes locked inside cells for weeks or months at a time without access to their needed medication and left to deteriorate, a former social worker on Rikers Island told the jails’ watchdog board on Tuesday. 

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.

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