ALBANY – Justice advocates on Tuesday sharply criticized Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic in prisons, implored him to substantially increase his release of state prisoners and demanded the state test every inmate for COVID-19.
In a panel discussion that painted a ghastly portrait of COVID-19's impact within state correctional facilities, advocates – including a medical expert, a state lawmaker and the mother of an inmate – asked the governor to act quickly.
“Time is not on anybody’s side here,” said Robert Cohen, a doctor and member of the New York City Board of Correction, which oversees the city’s jail system. He said the state is “doing very little from what I know to prevent the spread” of the coronavirus in its prisons.
Cohen said the state needs to conduct mass testing of all inmates, starting with those who are older and risk dying from the disease. He said state prisons need to make sure employees wear proper masks daily, change those masks daily and do more than just put up a sign.
Cohen said New York City prisons basically released half their population, which he said was younger than the state prison population. He said it is not too late for state prisons to stem the spread of COVID-19, but if nothing is done it will “overwhelm the medical facilities of the prisons and hospitals.”
“There is time to act and that time can make an enormous difference,” Cohen said.
As of Monday, 401 inmates and 1,117 staff members had been infected with COVID-19, according to the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision the website. Twelve inmates and four staff members have died. An additional 52 parolees have been infected. Four of them have died.
The DOCCS website said the agency works with the state Department of Health and uses the same COVID-19 testing process as in the outside world. It states: "Our process identifies patients who are ill and require special monitoring and care and isolates those who create the greatest risk of transmission to others. Asymptomatic patients who wear a mask and follow social distancing and hand hygiene guidelines have minimal risk to others. A nurse will swab the individual and that swab is then sent to an authorized lab. As we await the results, the individual is isolated. If an individual’s test result is positive that person is maintained in isolation for a minimum of 14 days."
On April 14, the agency started to release prisoners with 90 or fewer days left on their sentence, who are 55 or older and whose crime was not a violent crime or a sex offense.
On Tuesday, Assemblywoman Carmen De La Rosa, a Manhattan Democrat who took part in the panel discussion, said the state’s criteria to release inmates has been far too small and does not take into account needs of inmates’ health or those serving lengthy sentences.
“We know that there are people who are languishing behind bars who are sick,” the lawmaker said. “We’re calling on (the governor) to do more.”
De La Rosa read part of a letter she said she received from the mother of an inmate. The prisoner told the mother that the situation was so dire in prison, "It’s like we are an experiment.”
An Erie County woman whose daughter is serving a 15-to-life sentence in Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in Westchester County, a prison for female inmates, said her daughter informed her that inmates are afraid of where to go in the prison because of the threat of coronavirus. The woman noted that in addition to being the mother on inmate, she also was once the victim of a heinous crime.
Social distancing measures taken in society, she and other advocates said, are impossible behind bars.
"None of are immune from this virus – or the next one down the pike,” she said.