Activists call on state legislature to do more for incarcerated New Yorkers

Advocates held a hearing on Wednesday criticizing various aspects of the state’s approach to handling the spread of the coronavirus in jails and prisons, including transparency on conditions inside facilities and the limited release of incarcerated people during the pandemic.

“Not only Black lives matter; incarcerated lives matter,” said Donna Robinson, whose daughter is incarcerated.

New York prisons haven’t seen outbreaks as dire as those emerging in other parts of the country, such as Texas and Florida. As of Tuesday, 755 incarcerated people in the state have tested positive for COVID-19 in total and 17 have died from the disease. 

But testimony from family members of formerly incarcerated people, attorneys and jail officials described environments where sufficient precautions aren’t being taken, which continue to put people in prisons and jails at risk.

“Social distancing is not occurring in the jails and prisons,” said Robert Cohen, a physician and member of the New York City Board of Correction.

Even as coronavirus cases declined throughout the state, four New York prisons had been seeing infection rates of 4.6% compared with the statewide rate of 1.9% earlier this month. At Shawangunk Correctional Facility, nearly one-fourth of the inmates tested positive for COVID-19.

New York has released around 1,400 inmates, all nonviolent offenders, during the pandemic to mitigate the spread. But activists have called for more people to be let out, especially elderly incarcerated people who are at higher risk during the pandemic. 

“The state knew better,” said Stefen Short, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society. “It had multiple lists of medically vulnerable people to consider for immediate release and expert recommendations for facilitating those releases – but it simply ignored them.”