New York City’s largest jail is in muddy waters again after three Department of Corrections employees were suspended Monday, nearly 48 hours after an inmate died in Rikers Island custody, The City reported. Officials were investigating whether staff missed required checks or ignored signs of medical distress.
The NYC publication reported Monday the inmate — Ardit Billa, 29 — died while in custody at around 12:25 a.m. on Saturday, August 23, in his cell during a cell-check tour at the jail’s George R. Vierno Center. The DOC told the paper that medical staff couldn’t revive Billa, who was pronounced dead just before 1 a.m.
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A correction captain and two officers were suspended following Billa’s death.
He’s the tenth person to die in DOC custody this year, according to The City. Billa’s aunt told The City her nephew came to the U.S. in 2017 on a green card and worked in the construction and restaurant industries.
An anonymous source told the outlet that Billa barely left his cell leading up to his death, and was diagnosed with schizophrenia by the DOC based on an intake evaluation. His aunt, who requested not to be named, refuted that.
“We don’t believe that. That’s not him,” his aunt said. “He was a people’s person — he would make friends with the wall.”
Justyna Rzewinski is a former clinical supervisor who worked with the unit where Billa stayed. She wrote in a June letter shared with criminal justice publication The Marshall Project that officers often kept inmates in severe solitary confinement in a phrase staff called “deadlocking.”
She informed the city’s Board of Correction about the unspoken policy in October, which led to the release of inmates from confinement and a subsequent city investigation.
“It made no logical sense that people who were supposed to be receiving treatment were being denied medication and placed in conditions that would exacerbate their symptoms of mental illness,” she wrote.
Rikers Island’s psychiatric unit
Billa stayed in the jail’s Program to Accelerate Clinical Effectiveness unit, which housed detainees who struggled with mental illnesses, The City reported. The Department of Corrections said inmates in the unit are treated as incarcerated patients, receiving prescribed treatments, medications and adhering to unit-specific jail rules.
Rzewinski worked at the complex’s PACE and observation units as a clinical supervisor from 2023 until September 2024. Patients were deadlocked in cells without human contact, medication or sunlight, she wrote.
“Once patients were deadlocked, they would rapidly decompensate to the point where they’d bang on their doors, scream all day and night, and smear feces all over their cells,” she wrote. “The officers would then use behavior that was a direct result of extreme confinement to justify extending it.”
Deadlocking isn’t an official policy, Rzewinski wrote, but that didn’t stop many officers from continuing the practice. She claimed that it was so prevalent that inmates were familiar with the term.
Officers continued the practice seemingly without detection by placing pieces of white paper on buttons that opened cell doors for deadlocked inmates, she wrote. The papers signaled to officers not to open a cell.
She testified to the city’s Board of Correction on Oct. 8, which resulted in several inmates being released from deadlock. The city’s Department of Investigation opened a probe into the unit, which she was told could last at least a year.
The New York County Defender Services, a group of public defenders, corroborated Rzewinski’s claims in an Oct. 8 statement and said their detained clients have spoken out about the conditions for several years.
NYC closing Rikers Island
New York City has long been in the process of closing Rikers Island in favor of borough-based detention centers. Former NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio released the long-term plan, which had a target closure date of 2027. The city council voted in 2019 to close the jail, forcing the city to comply with a legal mandate.
Closing the notorious 1932 jail requires the city to build four jails in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens boroughs, according to the city’s dedicated website on closing Rikers. The jails will hold no more than 3,300 inmates.
“A primary goal of closing Rikers and building borough-based jails is to allow family members, service providers and attorneys greater access to the people in detention, as well as closer access to the Courts,” according to the city. “Rebuilding the jails on Rikers Island would undermine these goals.”
The city passed a zoning change that banned incarceration on Rikers Island after the new jails open.
Current Mayor Eric Adams has fought to keep the lock-up open, as recently as signing an agreement with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to open an office at the complex. A judge issued a restraining order, preventing the city from following through with the agreement.
