Rikers OD vic got no rehab

A RIKERS ISLAND inmate who died from an apparent drug overdose was never put in a drug rehab program or given any counseling, jail insiders say.

Selmin Feratovic, 28, was found dead inside his cell in the Otis Bantum Correctional Center at 3 a.m. on Oct. 19. He was being held on $50,000 bail since March 25 after a series of thefts in Brooklyn and the Bronx.

His lawyer, Anisha Gupta, said she repeatedly encouraged him to seek treatment. “He knew he needed a program and he wanted a program,” she said.

But that never happened, sources familiar with his case say.

Like all city detainees, Feratovic (photo inset) was screened by a medical staffer and given a drug test upon his entry into the city jail system.

But he got little other medical care despite a long recorded history of drug addiction, records show.

During his 218 days behind bars, he was never seen by a medical clinician after his intake screening, according to a clinician who reviewed his case file after his death. “That’s horrific,” the clinician said. A representative for city Health and Hospitals — which oversees medical care for inmates — said it could not comment due to patient confidentiality laws. But inmates who have a drug problem get counseling as well as in-jail programming and treatment, said Health and Hospitals spokesman Levi Fishman. Feratovic’s lawyer said the lack of drug treatment for her client was par for the course at the city’s scandal-scarred jail system. “The fact is that there are people dealing with these kinds of medical crises who simply should not be in jail, but rather be receiving meaningful treatment,” Gupta said. Since the city announced its opioid strategy in March, on average there are 580 inmates getting methadone and 130 inmates receiving buprenorphine to help them recover.