Corrections staff, officers and family gathered Friday on Rikers Island to celebrate the legacy of a longtime Department of Corrections (DOC) employee who lived in the Bronx by naming the law library in his honor.
The Department of Correction (DOC) renamed the library in honor of the late Edwin Felicien, a dedicated Bronx resident who served the department for 57 years, making him the longest serving NYC DOC employee in the department’s history. A longtime advocate for justice, Felicien worked in the DOC’s legal division and played a vital role in ensuring fair sentencing for inmates.
NYC Department of Correction Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie addressed the room full of colleagues and loved ones there to remember Felicien, who died in 2017.
“ Like all of the heroes who served DOC, Mr. Felicien did his work without the expectation of recognition,” Maginley-Liddie said. “He simply and unwaveringly supported the work of this department year in and year out.”
In the nearly six decades that Felician worked in DOC’s legal division, he worked with complex sentencing provisions, reviewing the sentences of people incarcerated in the NYC correctional system to evaluate whether they were serving appropriate sentences for their convictions. He successfully helped reduce the sentences of many of the cases he reviewed, according to DOC officials.
One after another, friends and colleagues spoke about Felicien’s integrity, selflessness and commitment to justice.
“ That’s what was so beautiful about him and his commitment to this work, that he always saw the people at the other end of their hardships,” Maginley-Liddie said. “He was dedicated to ensuring people weren’t abandoned in their greatest time of need.”
The DOC Commissioner spoke of a time when Felicien spent years of his life helping a man who was incarcerated reduce his sentence. Later, the man wrote to Felicien, thanking him and saying that he was the only one who ever actually helped him.
“ They may not have all written letters, but in nearly six decades of service, the truth is, he touched thousands upon thousands of lives,” Maginley-Liddie said. “Today, we ensure his name and legacy will touch thousands upon thousands more.”
Known for his warmth, a steel-trap mind and unmatched compassion, Felicien became a trusted advisor and mentor to many of the attorneys and uniformed officers he worked with in the legal division of the DOC.
Corrections Officer Jesus Varela met Felicien in 2014 while working as security detail for the DOC General Council, sitting in a cubicle a row away from Felicien. Friends and family laughed as Varela described the mountain of papers that would litter Felicien’s desk and his love of corduroy. Varela remembered how corrections officers and attorneys both came to Felicien as an authority when they had questions about sentencing.
“ Mr. Felicien was a man of few words, but when he spoke, everyone listened,” Varela said.
But Felicien’s impact extended beyond his professional life. His surviving family—including his sisters, brothers, nieces, and nephews—attended the dedication ceremony, sharing with the Bronx Times that he upheld his values just as strongly at home as he did at work.
Felicien’s mother and father immigrated to the U.S. from St. Lucia in the Caribbean. His family told the Bronx Times that they instilled in their children a sense of “pride, determination, hard work and dedication to humanity,” which impacted Felicien for the rest of his life.
When Felicien was honored with the Sloan Public Service Award in 1994, he donated a portion of the $5,000 prize he was awarded to charity. Felicien was also passionate about providing financial support to families in Ghana, a tradition that his own family carried on in his honor after he died
An avid runner, Felicien ran the New York City marathon 18 times, something friends and family said was a testament to his determination. Felicien’s nephew, Tenor Felicien III, said that like his marathon running and his rise through the DOC legal division, his late uncle was laser focused and committed through all aspects of his life.
“Whatever he put his mind to, he did it,” Felicien III said of his uncle.
Felicien’s family told the Bronx Times that seeing him get the honor and recognition he deserved was “the greatest feeling ever.”
