Justyna Rzewinski : A Whistleblower's Fight for Mental Health in Prisons

Welcome to Why Not Me The World? Podcast hosted by
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alone in this world. Hopefully you gain more awareness, acceptance,
and a better understanding for autism around the world. Hi,
I'm Tony Mantler. Welcome to Why Not Me the World?
Humanity over Handcuffs the Silent Crisis special event. Today would
joined by an incredible guest, Justina Razinski, with over a
decade of experience working with populations impacted by the criminal
legal system. Justina is a passionate advocate for criminal justice
reform and a dedicated force for meaningful change. She's here
to share her inspiring story and I'm thrilled to have
her on the show. Thanks for coming on, Thank you
for having me. Oh it's my pleasure. If you would,
Could you expand on what you're doing now since you
left Rikers Island.
So since Rikers le see what has changed. I've just
been like really involved, like different organizations that are working
to close Rikers So been doing a lot of work
with that and attending conferences, doing some speaking engagements.
What is your focus on Rikers now? You've worked there
and then you left the and then once you left
you became a whistleblower to tell everyone some of the
things that was going on in the prison. What's your
focus now on what you saw, what they do and
what you think needs to be changed.
You know how they treated people with a severe mental illness.
And we're working to eventually close it, or while it's
not being closed, for a federal receivership to take over.
It does make sense for the short term instead of
just closing it, trying to address some of the things
that do need to be changed so things can be
better and restructure it so that it can still be
a facility that is used, but one that has done
in a better situation for all involved.
Yeah, the goal is for it to be closed, and
it's actually the law that it needs to be closed
by twenty twenty seven, but that's not going to happen
by twenty twenty seven, and the plan is to build
smaller jails in each borough and then allocate that money
that's left over for community resources because the budget for
doc is two point eight billion per year. But if
it's closed and the smaller jerrors all built, that would
save around one billion per year. So there is construction
taking place. I don't remember which borrows, but there is.
And like I said, this is a plan and it's
the law, so it does have to close. It just
depends on when, because the deadline was twenty twenty seven,
but it's not going to happen by that time. The
Rikers Island Jail, it's on an island, so it's really
difficult for like people to come in and visit their
loved ones or lawyers. It's a whole day trip just
getting on the island. If the jails, if the smaller
jails are built in each borough, it would also make
it less difficult for people to be able to go
and visit.
Yeah, that makes sense. So what are you doing now
to support all that and reintegrating anything that's changed since
you left there?
So I've been involved with different organizations. Like last Friday,
I spoke at a rally because it was the Committee
of Criminal Justice budget hearing. We had a rally in
front of City Hall and me and other advocates as
well as people who are incarcetrated spoke about their experience
and also where the money should go, and we want
the money to go into alternatives to incur soreition mental
health wards so that people with the severe mental illness
don't end up going to Rikers, that they actually receive
the kind of treatment that they need, because as I
witness on Rikers Island, people don't get any mental health
treatment and they actually get worse. And these individuals are
coming back into the community and that's how they're being
released from Rikers Island, not medicated, traumatized. And I'm not
saying like people with a mental illness commit a crime,
but they don't have the supports to help them if
they're not on their medications. There's a risk for that.
It's our doing as a society not supporting these individuals
and providing them with the help that they actually need.
Yeah. Yeah. The one thing that I have heard talking
with various people about mental health is the prisons should
not be the hospitals for the people that are incarcerated there.
They need to be in places where they can get
their medications as they need it, and hopefully reform in
such a way so when they do transition into the
public that they are actually ready for it exactly.
I've also been working with different coalitions. In January, I
went up to Albany and spoke at a press conference
there about the Court Expansion Act which we're trying to pass,
which would extend mental health courts and programs in the community.
I know that you was working at one time with
people as they come out of the legal system. Are
you still doing that or have you transitioned into something different?
What are you doing now?
So my like nine to five full time job, I'm
working in a supervised release program. So this is pre trial.
So this is when somebody is arranged and they go
before the judge in the judge decides if they're going
to set belt. If they set belt, that means that
individual will be on Rikers Island fighting their case. And
if the judge recommends supervised release, then they're being able
to fight their case while being in the community. So
what we do is we make sure that they attend
all of their court appointments, they come in and do
check ins with us, and we also connect them to
outside resources.
When you give them the outside resources, is that for
the mental health issues that they're facing, or is that
for lawyers that can help them. What kind of outside
services are you providing or suggesting for them?
So they have a lawyer assigned to them right away,
So we do not help with that. We do communicate
with the lawyers and we let them know if the
participant hasn't come in, but through the court, yes, we
connect them to mental health services, but also other services
such as employment or education, housing. These individuals come with
a lot of issues and a lot of needs, so
we are able to do all of that. We refer
them to programs where they hire people who have involvement
with the criminal legal system. We refer them to GED
programs or college whatever needs they have.
Sure, that's good. What's the feedback that you're.
Getting from the whole Rikers situation.
Well, the Riker's situation is certainly part of that. Also
the speaking engagements that you're doing to help promote what
you've been advocating for.
Yeah, it's been very positive. I've gotten so many supports.
I've met so many people in this work and they've
been very supportive. Un Fortunately, people at Wrikers are not
and I have very few people that I still talk to.
Most of the people just don't talk to me. But
I received so much support on the outside from lawyers, advocates,
people in this work. It's been very overwhelming in a
good way. They're really happy and they ask me, we're
doing a rally, do you want to come and talk.
I've been working with lawyers on certain things. Legal Aid
has a lawsuit against doc for lack of access to
medical care, and I was able to provide an affidavit
for that and where I witnessed how individuals there do
not receive medical care. It's been really positive working with
all of these individuals.
That's good to hear. Now, anytime you go into something,
you always have your goals that you want to accomplish
there in the time that you've been there. What are
some of the things that you've become acomplished that you
in the back of your mind thought, Man, I probably
might not be able to get this, but you did.
From what I've heard, and I don't know if this
is true, but this is what I heard that they're
no longer deadlocking individuals, and if somebody is locked in,
they're only locked in for a tour and then the
officers are told to let that person out. And I
couldn't believe that when I heard it, because I remember
working there and having people on my unit locked in
for weeks and months, and it was a number of people.
So just hearing that nobody's locked in only for a tour,
I couldn't believe it. I was like, Wow, I did that. Actually,
that's amazing because it was happening in every unit. So
I didn't know that I would have such an impact.
There's currently investigations going in so this is being investigated,
so they have taken my concerns and what I discussed
it very seriously, and I really did not think it
was going to be such a big impact.
Wow, that's certainly very good. Now you made that impact.
What are some of the other things you are trying
to accomplish? I mean, that's a tremendous amount in just
that short period of time. What are some of the
other things you're trying to get out there so people
can understand what you're advocating for in what's going on,
and that way you can hopefully make a dedicated change.
Yes, So definitely letting the public know about how people
with mental illness are treated in a jail, because a
lot of people don't know. If you don't have a
family member. If you're not doing this work, you have
no idea. And this is where we send the most
vulnerable people to a jail where they don't receive any treatment.
So so I'm always trying to make the public aware.
And even though like they're not locking in anyone, doesn't
mean the world stopped. Because that's happening right now. I
want to make sure it continues and not because now
they're on the spotlight, they're not doing this and then
a few months past sometime passes and they go back
to it. So that's my goal, and like I said,
to help those wrikers and help extend more programs where
people actually get the mental health treatment that they need.
You work with a lot of people that are schizophrenic,
is that correct? Now? Schizophrenia has a stigma attached to
it that some people just do not understand. They think
that if they hear about someone that's schizophrenic, they think
about the movies, which just is not true. How do
you change that perception when you're talking about schizophrenia. And unfortunately,
when you're dealing with schizophrenia, you have some of the
worst case scenarios. They do some really bad things but
then they get on medications, they understand what they did
was wrong, and now they're a totally different person from
what they were. How do you change the perception of
those people when you're talking with others that don't understand
because they look at it as they did something bad,
put them in jail. Throw away the key.
Yeah, So I try to educate people, and I say,
eventually these individuals will be coming out of jail. We're
not the judge and the jury. We can't just throw
away the key and really educating them about what the
system does to them by locking them in a cell
and not giving them access to medications. It's these individuals
were born with this, It's not like they brought it
on themselves, and we need to help them as a society.
And I often talk about how while I was working
on Rankers, some of my patients, most of my patients
were found unfit to stand trial and they had to
go to an homage facility to be restored to fitness,
and I member when they would come back, they came
back completely different people because they were medicated, they were
not locked in, they were able to participate in group.
And I always say I was able to have a
coherent conversation. They were unrecognizable. And it's just like any
other medical condition. If you have diabetes, you have to
take medications for it, just like with mental illness. With
certain mental illness like schizophrenia and other disorders. When individuals
may commit a crime or do something like it's not
because they really want to. First of all, they may
be off their medications. They may be experiencing auditory or
visual hallucinations. A lot of my all of my patients
that I spoke to on Rikers Ireland, like they all
told me when they were arrested for the crime, all
of them were off the medications. And like I said,
I'm not saying that every person with skits a friend
your commits a crime, but they were after medications. They
were living on the street, homeless, writing the train, no
supports know how we as a society, if we really
care about community safety and we want everyone to see safe,
we have to help these individuals.
Yeah, and a lot of these people are in their
late teens or mid twenties, they're just developing it. I
was told the other day that it's from twelve to
twenty four that it first starts to show up. With
these individuals. A lot of them aren't even on medications
because they don't even realize that they have a problem yet.
So how do we get it across to people? Like
you said, this is not something they decided to do.
This is something that evolved as they grew older, because
sometimes it takes years for it to come out and
then by that time is developed into unfortunately a real problem.
Yeah, Like I said, just education, because I find out
like people are not educated about mental illness and don't
really understand it, and like you said, only see certain
things on the media. They have so many misceptions. So
working with this population, I tried to address those misconceptions
and just educate them. And like I said, talk about
I often talk about, especially when I'm advocating for mental
health treatment, that mental health treatment does work, because I've
seen my patients come back completely different. A lot of
them didn't didn't even remember the way they were adding
when they were off their medications, completely different people. So
it's not that like when they're after medications, this is
who they are, No, because I've seen them be completely
different people. And I've seen my patients be very sorry
about the things they've done and they were genuine about
things they did when they were off their medication. So
it's not like this is who this person is. No,
this is what happens when the person is off their medication.
But they do have potential and not like I said,
I've seen it. I cleared my eyes. There was a
time where right before I left Rikers and went on
to somebody else's union to talk to his staff, and
a patient came up to me and he was like, hey,
do you remember me? And I was like, no, I'm sorry,
what is your name? And he told me his name,
and I could not believe it who I was talking to,
because when he was on my unit, he was locked in.
He was screaming, cursing me out and he went to OMH.
She came back and we were able to have a
conversation and he was like, yes, I'm going to stay
on my medication. I took my medication when I was
in treatment and it helped and like very motivated to
continue a completely different person.
What's some of the biggest challenges you may come across
when you go out to speak various rallies that you
might be doing when you're speaking at it. What's some
of the challenges that people might ask you that you
have to explain to them because they just don't understand.
They might not have it in their family, or they
might just be starting to address a situation that just
developed in their family.
Yeah, I think what comes up often is people say
they shouldn't have committed this crime and they wouldn't be
in jail, They shouldn't have done what they did. That
comes up so often because people justify it because they
don't want to feel bad for the individual or have
any empathy for the individual, so they justify and say,
these are the consequences this person committed a crime. Once again,
I have to educate them like, yes they did, and
we're not the judge or the jury. Nobody is saying
that it's okay to commit crimes. But we're working on
prevention because eventually these individuals will be returning to the community.
So them about that and the mental illness is not like, yes,
they committed a crime, but they were not on their medications.
They were sleeping on the train. I had so many
picians say they were sleeping on the train because they
did not want to stay in the shelter. So it's
a little bit more complicated than just committing a crime.
There's more that goes into it. And like I said,
if we really want our communities to be safe, we
need to help these individuals so that this doesn't continue
to happen. So when they're released, they're not released to
the same type of environment where they can commit another crime.
Do you help people so when they do get out,
they might have a chain of people that they can
work with that can help them make that transition from
prison life into society.
So right now I don't, so I work with individuals
who are arrested but not arraigned. But before I worked
on Rikers, I worked with people on parole, so they
were just coming home and they were mandated to treatments.
So that's what we did. We would connect them to
a lot of different supports because a lot of times
they didn't have the support and had to live in
a shelter because they were mandated to live in a shelter,
didn't have a job. Some of them have been away
for a very long time, so we would help them
with getting a job, or help them with getting an
appointment to see a psychiatrist, to see a therapist, and
help them navigate all of that and remind them of
those important appointments that they have.
Okay, you've pretty much done it all. You've worked with
people before they go into prison, you've worked with them
when they've been in prison, and then you've worked with
them after they've been released from prison. With everything that
you've done consisting of all three phases of it, which
one was most fulfilling for you?
That is a hard, hard question. Working with people in Coole.
I did it for eleven years and I absolutely loved
it because I think there were so many misconceptions and
still are about this population, and I've met so many
incredible people that have overcome so much just being imprisoned
and coming out and reintegrate. I loved that job. I
really loved working on Rikers. I loved working with the patients.
I didn't like what I was seeing being done to them,
but I loved working with the people that were incarcerated there,
and I really enjoyed this. I don't know, I don't know.
It's so hard to say. I knew that I would
be working within this field, so I would never switch
to another field that worked with me children or families.
I knew it was going to be in this field,
and that's why when I was looking for another job,
I applied to this job because I wasn't going to
just leave Rikers go work as just a therapist somewhere
in an outpatient clinic. I knew that I wanted to
work within the criminal legal system. But I love all
parts of it.
That's really good that you love what you do. That's
just awesome. You brought up a change that happened in
Rikers because of what you had done. Is there anything
that you see on the cusp of change that you've
been advocating for.
Certain laws that we're trying to pass. I think we
have a good chance of it. I've been a part
of it. These laws have been tried to be changed
for years. But I think definitely me coming out and
my story has made an impact and hopefully will help
the law to become law. It's not just because of me,
like there's been advocates who have been working on this
for a long time. But I think me sharing my
story will help because I do talk about how there
is no mental health treatment and in jail, and that's
why we need to invest the money that we are
investing in jails into mental health treatment. But those things
take time. Immediate impact that I had, like I said,
just having those individuals not be locked in and then
being investigated. The investigation is also going to take a
long time. So that has definitely made an impact, But
all the other things that I am working on is
going to take time.
That's right. Nothing in the legal system of legislation will
happen very quickly, but.
I'm happy to be a part of it. We're also
working me and some other advocates or working to pass
a bill that would mandate all healthcare professionals to report
any abuse that they see, and I think that would
be amazing when that bill gets passed, because I remember
working on wrikers there was no agency that I could
call to report what I'm seeing, and I was very
shocked by that. Because I worked an outpatient. We would
call the Justice Center, and I was so surprised, Like,
we're mandated reporters and we see people being abused, and
like we don't call anyone, so they investigate. I'm a
part of that effort, and when there are conferences or
speaking engagements, like I talk about my experience and how
I would love to have an agency that I would
be able to report to what I saw, and I
think if that was in place, then I probably would
have still been working there. I had to leave and
report it to the media because there was nowhere else
to report it to. If a child is being abused,
we contact CPS, but there's no format, there's no organization
that agency that we call when we see abuse happen
in jails and prisons. I think that would make such
a big difference for me working with the other advocates
to help pass that bill, but that's going to take time.
I think that's a great thing that you're doing. Now,
what do you think is important that the listeners should
know about everything that you're trying to do Now?
I really think that we need to rethink how we
provide treatment for people with a mental illness. That jail
or prison is not the place for them. And we're
not saying that they shouldn't face consequences, but these individuals
do need treatment and they should not be in a
jail or a prison, because no matter how great the
jail or the prison is, at the end of the day,
it's still a jail and it's still a prison, and
that's not the place for these individuals. And like I said,
they are coming out to the community. We can't just
throw away the key. And I think also what I
found through this my whole experience, is how like really
powerful you're voices. Because going into this, I never imagined
that all of this would happen. I didn't think my
story was so big and me speaking out would have
an impact. It did. I think anytime we do see
any type of abuse, any type of mistreatment, we need
to speak out about it. Because there were people that
work on rankers, people that left, and nobody spoke about it,
and I did, and it did have an impact. Our
voice does matter and we can make an impact. Some
people say, oh, these systems they're never going to change,
we shouldn't even try. No, our voice does matter and
we can make an impact.
Yeah, that's so true. All we have to do is
speak up loudly. This has been awesome, a lot of
great information, great conversation. I really appreciate you taking the
time to come on.
No, thank you so much. Every time I get an
opportunity to speak about it and educate more people. That's
why I do this work.
Yes, I agree, that's what it's all about is education.
Thanks again, thanks for taking the time out of your
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