By Michele Evans / NYweeklyRecord.com / Date: 9/24/2026
NEW YORK CITY, NY –
New allegations that people with serious mental illness are being locked inside Rikers Island cells for prolonged periods collided with another Department of Correction denial at a City Council oversight hearing this week.
Barbara Hamilton, director of the Incarcerated Client Services Unit at The Legal Aid Society, told lawmakers that several clients had experienced the practice known as “deadlocking,” according to Queens Daily Eagle. The term describes keeping a person in a cell for extended periods, cutting off access to treatment, recreation, programming and human contact.
The allegations are not findings by a court or oversight agency. They are claims made by attorneys who represent people in city custody. DOC officials told the Council they have not been able to identify the practice in the jails.
That gap is now the central accountability question. If the department says deadlocking cannot be found while defense lawyers say their clients are living through it, who is independently checking housing units, medical records, escort logs and cell-door activity?
Hamilton described one client who was allegedly deadlocked on and off for about a year and began hallucinating. She said the person did not receive medical care until after an act of self-harm. Another client with serious mental illness was allegedly denied recreation and programming. When lawyers visited, Hamilton testified, the woman’s clothes were stained with menstrual blood and she had used cereal boxes to make sanitary products.
Those details are allegations, and Legal Aid declined to provide identifying information about the clients. Their anonymity protects private medical and legal information, but it also means the public cannot independently examine the cases from the hearing record alone.
The account echoes allegations first raised by a former Rikers social worker in 2024. The whistleblower said people in mental-health units were sometimes left in cells for weeks or months and denied medication, sunlight and meaningful contact. The Marshall Project published her account in 2025.
Zachary Katznelson, executive director of the Independent Rikers Commission, told the Council that DOC needs real oversight to verify that deadlocking has ended. He also called for renewed crisis-intervention training, reopening specialized units for people with serious mental illness and reliable transportation to medical appointments.
His testimony pointed beyond the cell door. Katznelson urged the city to place people approved for supportive housing into appropriate housing at release and to connect them with community providers before they leave custody. Without those steps, people can move from jail into shelters, the subway or the street with fractured treatment plans.
DOC’s inability to confirm the practice does not settle whether it exists. It shows why verifiable records matter. Lawmakers can demand unit-level data on time out of cell, missed medical appointments, recreation, programming, self-harm and the use of restrictive housing for people with mental illness.
The Department of Correction did not provide an additional response to Queens Daily Eagle. That leaves the Council with two incompatible accounts and New Yorkers with no public audit showing which one is true.
Rikers is supposed to close in 2027. Until then, the city remains responsible for every person held there. A denial without independent proof cannot be the last word when the allegations involve untreated illness, isolation and self-harm.
Leave a Reply