Don’t let COVID end inmates’ lives
One of the quiet horrors of this terrible year has been the explosion of sickness and death in New York prisons due to COVID-19. It’s an epidemic within the pandemic that is now spreading to schools, assisted living facilities and other places beyond the bars, despite increasingly frantic pleas to the Cuomo administration to take action.
Three incarcerated people have died from COVID-19 in the last two weeks, bringing the total number of prisoner fatalities from the disease to 21, according to the latest statistics from the state’s Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS). In the month of December alone, a staggering 1,334 incarcerated people have tested positive for COVID-19.
“As you can imagine, social distancing in a prison environment is just mathematically impossible. There is no such thing as social distancing,” says Jose Saldana, the executive director of Release Aging People in Prison (RAPP), an advocacy group.
“To make matters worse, the Department of Corrections — even today — is actually not providing adequate PPE [personal protective equipment],” Soldana told me. “They actually expect one disposable mask to last for three weeks. Incarcerated people are just washing these masks, until it probably loses its effectiveness — it’s like not having a mask on after a while.”
The disease is tearing through the DOCCS staff as well. Six employees have died from the disease, and as of this writing the overall number of staffers who have tested positive — 2,957 — is almost exactly the same number as the 2,945 prisoners in whom the disease has been detected.
“Tens of thousands of New Yorkers in prison and their families are desperate for Gov. Cuomo to take real action to stop COVID-19 behind bars,” Saldana’s organization said in a statement. “Cuomo must grant lifesaving clemencies to vulnerable people and reduce the prison population right now.”
Time is of the essence. With officers, administrators and others circulating in and out of state prisons every day, the disease has spread. RAPP says there are currently outbreaks inside Attica, Bedford Hills, Bare Hill, Clinton, Woodbourne, Groveland, Cayuga and Walsh Correctional Facilities.
And the coronavirus, as we all know, doesn’t stay put. Last month, an outbreak at Greene Correctional (which is south of
Albany) struck 100 incarcerated people and 14 staffers. Then it spread to a nearby elementary school where a corrections officer’s daughter is a student, and also hit an assisted living facility, according to the Times Union.
“The state has cracked down on bars, restaurants, wedding venues, houses of worship, and other entities, but seems relatively blithe when it comes to prisons,” the newspaper said in a blistering editorial.
That points to a larger problem: New York’s contemptuous indifference when it comes to our captive population of incarcerated people. Even before the pandemic, they got harsh treatment and scant mercy from the Cuomo administration, and that seems to suit many New Yorkers just fine.
Unlike many other states, New York holds thousands of elderly prisoners for decades beyond the point of posing a threat to society. An estimated 9,000 people are serving sentences so long that they will die in prison unless granted parole or some kind of clemency.
Cuomo is notoriously stingy with granting clemency. More than 6,500 people in prison have asked for some form of mercy — but Cuomo, after nearly a decade in office, has commuted the sentences of only 31 people.
In cases where prisoners are growing old and sick behind bars, continuing to hold them indefinitely — long after they have expressed remorse and turned their lives around — is a waste of state resources.
“We’re talking about 70-year-old men — women also — who have languished in prison 20 years, 30 years, 40 years,” Saldana told me. “It serves no purpose to keep them in prison, especially under such a serious health crisis.”
This year, with the pandemic raging, more than 1,000 people applied for medical parole, an early release from confinement for those facing serious illness. The state approved only nine applicants.
It’s well known by cops, criminologists and corrections professionals that most people convicted of crimes eventually “age out” of the behavior that landed them behind bars. New York’s parole hearings — which frequently last less than 15 minutes — often ignore this wellknown fact.
“What about those who are the least likely to return to prison, the least likely to commit another crime? It serves absolutely no purpose,” Saldana says about New York’s frequent denials of parole. “It doesn’t serve justice, because justice is not about vengeance. Justice is about evaluating someone and valuing his or her transformation and redemption.”
The coronavirus has revealed the high cost — moral and medical — of subjecting people to endless punishment. The question is whether New York will wake up and choose a different direction.
Re: Voicer Lisa Maniaci concerning “Sen. Schumer blasting Trump for not signing off on the relief bill right away” and blaming Nancy Pelosi’s “petty vendetta”: The Voicer refused to acknowledge facts. The Democratic-controlled House passed its stimulus bill in May. It wasn’t until September for the GOP-controlled Senate under Mitch McConnell to produce their own companion bill. McConnell is still refusing to bring current bills to a vote. It is amazing that the Trump idolaters are so indoctrinated, ignorant or fearful of facts that they continue to propagate the lies they are fed. It is a sad and dangerous commentary on the educational level of some Americans that they are unable to pursue research to enlighten themselves — or they choose not.
Uncounted blessings
His mind an insular warren of revenge fantasies, Donald Trump continues to lay waste to true accomplishments of his disruptive term — noteworthy economic gains which lifted minority employment and wages, strengthening of our military after the disrepair of the preceding Obama-Biden eight years, enforcing NATO contributions while maintaining the status quo beyond our shores, truly magnificent accomplishments to Middle East peace, bracing China for multiple transgressions and more. Too bad his ego cannot abide his loss to Joe Biden and too bad the new president, also guided by misplaced ego, will pursue policies inimical to some of Trump’s successes.
Front of the line
Brooklyn: Having Congress get vaccinated to cover Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s despicable act means that every one of them is clueless and greedy. Will they be in the overcrowded emergency rooms tending to the dying? In the next election, I’m voting for anyone whose name I don’t recognize. The odds are better that they will be honorable and serve the American dream without contempt for the taxpayer. I know that you won’t print this because the Daily News is an AOC groupie.