AN UNWELCOME VISITOR
Coronavirus in Prison — New York
States must face the reality of health challenges inside
As the rest of the country tries to make decisions about what is open and what is closed during the Covid-19 pandemic, one sector is often forgotten — people in prisons and jails. Even as New York uses prison labor to make its own branded hand sanitizer, it is unclear what safety protocols will be in place for those on the inside.
We know healthcare is severely lacking inside, and now we have a disease which takes advantage of many of prison’s deficits — the lack of ability to sanitize surfaces one comes into contact with, to own and carry hand sanitizer (contraband due to the alcohol), even to make sure you always have soap available (much less that you can use it — particularly when handcuffed.)
“Incarcerated people and their families deserve better,” Dave George, associate director of RAPP, said at the Tuesday press conference. “They are just as deserving of emergency and potentially life saving public health responses to this serious virus as any other New Yorker.”
From urging facilities to develop health protocols, to putting pressure on politicians to take affirmative action, criminal justice advocates are figuring out how they can best protect people inside.
In New York, RAPP (Release Aging People in Prison) is calling on Governor Cuomo to use his clemency power to release those most at-risk.
“The coronavirus is going to have devastating impacts on incarcerated men and women,” said Jose Saldana, director of the Release Aging People in Prison (RAPP) campaign. Saldana spent 38 years in New York State prisons himself and was released about two years ago. His group put out a statement Monday urging Cuomo to use his clemency power to release the elderly and infirm, those who are most at risk of contracting coronavirus. The U.S. prison population age 55 or older has higher rates of chronic health conditions.
“Why would we keep them in prison just to die, especially when there is a serious health crisis coming their way?” Saldana asked. “This is the only sane, rational, and fair and just solution.”
