Jail move panned Bug fears at upstate prison for older inmates

A state plan to move more than 100 older inmates to a prison in the Adirondacks has relatives and advocates worried the lockup could become a deadly “nursing home”-like location if coronavvirus spreads there.

The state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision announced in May that it would transfer inmates 65 and older to the Adirondack Correctional Facility, located between Saranac Lake and Lake Placid.

More than 50 older incarcerated people have been sent to the prison, according to data seen by the Daily News.

“My brother is not in the greatest health,” said Darlene MacKenzie, whose 64year-old brother Edward, convicted of kidnapping in Nassau County in 1994, is at the Adirondack prison.

MacKenzie fears her brother (photo) could contract COVID-19 at the prison. “My greatest fear is they don’t even test them. It would probably spread at Adirondack,” she said.

“If just one COVID-19 case enters Adirondack, it creates a moral crisis that could be fatal to every person in the population,” a group of 77 advocacy organizations said in a letter to Gov. Cuomo and state legislative leaders.

“It also threatens to replicate the public health crisis experienced in nursing homes across the state,” said the letter. Roughly 6,000 nursing home patients in New York have died of

COVID-19.

The medium-security Adirondack prison once housed adolescent offenders. The state has re-purposed the prison to handle an older population, and the teenage offenders have been moved elsewhere.

Adirondack currently houses 60 inmates. It could hold up to 150, the Corrections Department says.

Of the 52 older inmates at the prison as of June 20, 54% are black and 55% have already served at least 15 years in prison, according to data seen by The News.

Advocacy groups called on Cuomo to grant clemency to all the prisoners the Corrections Department plans to move to Adirondack — or to at least make them eligible to go before the Parole Board.

A state Corrections Department spokeswoman said inmates at Adirondack will be safer because few COVID-19 cases have been reported upstate.