Free inmates at high risk: Correx Board

New York City should start releasing inmates at high risk of contracting the coronavirus — and make efforts to rapidly decrease the jail population, the Board of Correction said Tuesday.

“The city must drastically reduce the number of people in jail right now and limit new admissions to exceptional circumstances,” the Correction Department’s oversight body said in a statement.

According to the board, the city should prioritize for release those who are over 50, those detained for parole violations, and those serving one year or less or have underlying health conditions.

“We are evaluating right now, working with the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice and the NYPD, the number of people in our jail system who might be potentially high risk in terms of vulnerability to the virus,” Mayor de Blasio said Tuesday afternoon.

“Another category of people [we’re looking at] are those who are incarcerated who are at low risk of re-offending,” he added. “We’re going to evaluate those numbers and the details, and determine if, case by case, any of those individuals should be taken out of our jail system.”

The head of the union representing correction officers called the request “irresponsible.”

“It’s very sad that we have to remind the Board of Correction that their mandate, per the city’s Charter, is to advocate for the welfare of everyone in the Correction Department, not just the inmates,” said Elias Husamudeen, president of the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association.

Meanwhile, the Legal Aid Society and the Manhattan district attorney’s office are calling for state parolees to be released from city jails to stop the spread of coronavirus.

“We want these clients released. They don’t represent a threat to the community — particularly if they’re in on technical, noncriminal violations,” Lorraine McEvilley at Legal Aid told the Daily News.