Four New York City Council members have decried a practice by city jails of locking severely mentally ill people in their cells for extended periods, dubbed “deadlocking.”
The Council members — Sandy Nurse of Brooklyn, Tiffany Caban of Queens, Mercedes Narcisse of Brooklyn and Deputy Speaker Diana Ayala of the Bronx — demanded an investigation based on the account of former Rikers Island social worker Justyna Rzewinski as first detailed in the Daily News .
“The reports of people with severe mental illness at Rikers Island being ‘deadlocked’ are alarming and demand immediate action from the administration and Department of Correction,” the four Council members said, calling it a form of solitary confinement.
Rzewinski, who worked in special mental health units for 10 months ending in September, said officers often marooned some detainees in those units for weeks or even months, causing them to decompensate. She told The News and the Board of Correction the lock-ins were not documented.