The Department of Correction came under fire Tuesday from a frustrated New York City Council member over continuing delays in opening a 104-bed therapeutic unit at Bellevue Hospital for people held in the city’s jails.
Council Member Lincoln Restler (D-Brooklyn) said construction of the unit was complete, but DOC was refusing to staff it even though the project has been in the agency’s budget for five years.
“The Correction Department operates in fantasy land and does what it wants, when it wants,” Restler said. “This is not how it’s supposed to work. … We have 104 empty beds waiting to be opened but DOC won’t do its job.”
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Alexandria Maldonado, DOC’s assistant commissioner of strategic initiatives, acknowledged there was no official date set yet for the unit’s opening, but countered that there were still “significant construction items outstanding,” including the design of exit signs and metal trim, and attributed the delay to the state Commission on Correction.
Maldonado said there was also a hold up on establishing the proper staffing level for the unit.
Kirstan Conley, a spokeswoman for the state commission, seemed to lay responsibility with the city.
“Once the Bellevue Hospital construction project has achieved substantial completion, and the Department of Correction has demonstrated that it is fully prepared to adequately staff and safely populate the facility, the Commission of Correction will grant the necessary capacity rating,” Conley said.
The two other therapeutic-bed projects — at Woodhull Hospital and North Central Bronx Hospital — are also delayed, Restler said. Conley said these are “still in the design and development phase.”
A total of about 400 hospital beds are planned in the project among the three hospitals. Once complete they will augment the city’s project to close Rikers Island and open four borough-based jails with about 3,300 beds.
The state Commission on Correction did not reply to an inquiry asking for the status of the therapeutic-bed program from its perspective.
The exchange came during a City Council hearing over DOC’s executive budget. DOC Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie was a no-show, with her press office not offering an explanation for her absence.
On Tuesday afternoon, the Council sent out a press release that claimed the Adams administration had omitted a range of Correction-related programs from its 2026 budget, including $10.6 million for expanding the use of electronic monitoring instead of detention, $46 million for a form of supervised release focused on those most likely to re-offend, and $26 million in additional supportive housing funding.
Later in the hearing, DOC General Counsel James Conroy confirmed that a Department of Investigation inquiry into the practice of “deadlocking,” or confining mentally ill detainees to cells, was ongoing.
Conroy said DOI has recently requested additional documents as part of the probe. Former Rikers Island mental health nurse Justyna Rzewinski revealed the routine use of the practice by Correction officers in an exclusive interview with the Daily News on Oct. 8, sparking the investigation.
In the death of detainee Charizma Jones, who died of a rare, aggressive skin disease in July 2024, Conroy acknowledged that the term “medlock” was not in the department’s written directives, but was a “colloquial” or informal term.
Jones, in the days before she went into severe medical distress, was confined to her cell and Correction officers prevented medical staff from entering the cell to treat her, as The News previously reported.
Correction officers had justified Jones’ confinement by telling medical staff she was on “medlock,” The News reported.
Jones’ family in October filed a $50 million notice of intent to sue the city.
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