EDWARD MACKENZIE

when edward mackenzie went to prison 28 years ago, the old-timers advised him to keep up his health in the hope that he’d be free one day. At 65, he now suffers from high blood pressure and shoulder and back injuries. “I’m getting old and falling apart,” he says. “You want me to die in here?” He was moved to the Adirondack Correctional Facility last year, which the state is using as a prison for elderly inmates during the pandemic. Advocates say the center was underprepared to handle the health needs of elderly people and that it mixed a high-risk population together without testing them for Covid. For Mackenzie, it also meant he was too far away from his sister, Darlene, for her to visit. “During this incarceration, I lost my whole family: my mother, my father, two brothers, every aunt and uncle I had. That’s the hardest part, not being there for my family when they needed me.”