"The head of the city’s Department of Correction had little to say Tuesday when asked about allegations that officers have been regularly locking up detainees with mental health issues for days or weeks at a time in solitary confinement, blocking their access to medication and attention from doctors.

"Appearing before the Board of Correction on Tuesday during the citizen watchdog panel’s monthly meeting, Department of Correction Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie was relatively mum when questioned about “deadlocking” detaintees, which first came to light when a whistleblower detailed the concerning practice before the BOC last month.

"Deadlocking, as described by former Rikers Island social worker Justyna Rzewinski during the BOC’s October meeting, is an allegedly well-established practice in the city’s jails where officers indiscriminately lock up mentally ill detainees, cutting them off from health care, services and other people in DOC custody. The practice appears to be in 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."

....

"Michael Klinger, an attorney with Brooklyn Defender Services, said that his firm had also confirmed the indiscriminate use of deadlocking on Rikers.

"Klinger alleged that entire housing units had been deadlocked at one time and that detainees had to yell out of windows to neighboring housing units in order to alert others that someone was in need of medical attention.

"In another case, Klinger claimed that one of BDS’ clients was locked in a cell with no running water for a week. Without running water, the toilet would not flush. The feces in the room attracted insects, which soon swarmed the cell."

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