By Jacob Kaye<\/p>\n
Nearly two years after a social worker first alleged that correctional officers on Rikers Island regularly locked up detainees suffering from mental health issues for weeks or months at a time \u2013 cutting them off from healthcare, programming and other people in custody \u2013 the debate over the existence of the practice, known as \u201cdeadlocking,\u201d continued during a City Council hearing Wednesday. <\/p>\n
While an attorney with the Legal Aid Society told the City Council during an oversight hearing on mental health in the city\u2019s jails that several of her clients have languished as a result of the long-disputed practice, officials with the Department of Correction separately told lawmakers that they have been unable to identify the use of deadlocking, which a whistleblower first said was regularly employed against detainees in October 2024<\/a>. <\/p>\n Both the attorney and the DOC officials gave their testimony under oath. <\/p>\n The existence of deadlocking has been the subject of debate since former Rikers Island social worker Justyna Rzewinski told the Board of Correction that officers were using the variation of solitary confinement to punish detainees with mental illnesses. Rzewinski, who worked on Rikers Island from December 2023 through August 2024, told the BOC that some detainees were deadlocked in a cell for so long that they began to \u201cdecompensate.\u201d <\/p>\n The DOC immediately denied the use of the practice, even as others alleged deadlocking was Rikers Island\u2019s \u201cworst-kept secret.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Though allegations of deadlocking continued, the Department of Investigation found in May that its probe into the practice \u201cdid not reveal any instances where [detainees] were locked-in their cells for weeks or months at a time as alleged,\u201d according to The City Reporter<\/a>. <\/p>\n When asked by City Councilmember Selvena Brooks-Powers, who chairs the Council\u2019s Committee on Criminal Justice, to \u201cassure the Council that deadlocking [was] no longer occurring,\u201d the DOC referenced the DOI report. <\/p>\n \u201c[The DOI] issued a full report that they had not found instances of this,\u201d James Conroy, the DOC\u2019s general counsel, said. \u201cThe previous and this administration, in particular, is committed to ensuring that that is not going on.\u201d<\/p>\n While Conroy acknowledged in July during an oversight hearing before the Board of Correction that lock-in procedures weren\u2019t always followed, he has long denied the existence of deadlocking. <\/p>\n