Judge to inmates: You’re staying in jail
A Brooklyn judge saw no need Tuesday for a mass release of inmates from the borough’s federal lockup over coronavirus fears.
The ruling came in a monthslong legal battle between the federal Bureau of Prisons and lawyers advocating on behalf of 537 medically vulnerable inmates at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Sunset Park, who argued the jail has failed to adequately respond to the coronavirus pandemic.
“Rather than being indifferent to the virus, MDC officials have recognized COVID-19 as a serious threat and responded aggressively,” wrote Brooklyn Federal Judge Rachel Kovner in her ruling against the mass release.
Under the law, prisoners’ lawyers had to prove that the Metropolitan Detention Center responded to the pandemic with “deliberate indifference” and violated the Eighth Amendment, which bars cruel and unusual punishment, Kovner noted.
Kovner listed the responses of the lockup to the outbreak, which she noted has not killed a any Metropolitan Detention
Center inmates.
“They have, for example, implemented heightened sanitation protocols, distributed masks to inmates and staff, required use of masks when social distancing is not possible, initiated COVID-19 screenings upon entry to the MDC, created quarantine and isolation units, and substantially restricted movement within the facility,” Kovner wrote.
The pandemic resulted in the hospitalization of one Metropolitan Detention Center detainee, Kovner noted.
While testing of incarcerated individuals has been sporadic at the facility, Kovner said that the lack of deaths and hospitalizations confirms that the outbreak at the jail is not widespread.
“In the absence of broad testing, the best available indicator of the extent to which the virus has spread within the MDC are deaths and intensive care unit hospitalizations,” she wrote.
Nine inmates at the jail have tested positive out of 68 tested. The jail houses more than 1,600 people.