New York City Department of Correction Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie on Thursday said she has “personally” asked for an outside investigation of “deadlocking” — extended lock-ins of mentally ill detainees on Rikers Island — after reading about it in the Daily News.
“Those are extremely disturbing allegations and upon hearing it, upon reading the article, I personally called the inspector general and referred to them that matter for review,” she said at a City Council hearing in her first public comments on deadlocking.
“I also made it abundantly clear that is against our policy … and we have communicated in several meetings that it is prohibited,” Maginley-Liddie added.
On Oct. 8, the Daily News published the account of former jail social worker Justyna Rzewinski, who said the practice was common in jail mental health units and often went undocumented. Deadlocking, she said, deprives the detainees of medication and causes them to decompensate, or lose the ability to function.
Justyna Rzewinski (Theodore Parisienne for New York Daily News)
The city Board of Correction will consider a resolution at its Nov. 12 meeting “condemning the use of frequent, arbitrary, and unreported individualized involuntary lock-ins.”
Maginley-Liddie also said she had never heard the term “deadlocking.” Council Member Tiffany Caban noted that in a recent visit to Rikers Island, a veteran officer told her the term had been in use for a “long, long time.”
“I’m surprised, given how long you’ve been working there that you’ve never heard of that,” Caban said.
Maginley-Liddie has been at Correction for a decade, initially as a lawyer. She was named commissioner in December.
Meanwhile, the agency named James Walsh, who previously worked at DOC during Mayor de Blasio’s tenure, as its new deputy commissioner of security operations, officials confirmed.
Walsh replaces Ronald Brereton, who was abruptly ousted and walked away from agency headquarters on Wednesday. DOC has offered little explanation for Brereton’s removal, but he was under fire from the correction officers’ union.
Rikers Island (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)
In a statement, DOC said Walsh will report to Maginley-Liddie and oversee a broad array of units including Central Operations, security intelligence, fire safety, commissary, Correction Industries and Emergency Services.
Walsh was the deputy commissioner of Adult Programming & Community Partnerships under Joseph Ponte, who was commissioner from 2014 to 2017.
The appointment of a former de Blasio era official to a senior post in the jails was interesting because Mayor Adams has often blamed his predecessor’s administration for problems in the system.
In 2015, Walsh touted a 14-point plan to reduce violence in the jails through expanded use of programs.
“The worst thing in the jail are inmates with nothing productive to do,” he told the Wall Street Journal in 2016.