In ballooning outbreaks at about a third of the state’s 52 correctional facilities, nine incarcerated people have died in a three-week span and more than 1,000 incarcerated people have been infected in that time, according to a WNYC/Gothamist analysis of data from the State’s Department of Corrections and Community Supervision.
The rate of new infections in prisons is now twice that of the general public, the analysis shows. With COVID-19 cases spiking and the looming threat of a new, more infectious COVID-19 variant, advocates and public health experts warn prioritizing incarcerated people and corrections officers for vaccination and releasing vulnerable inmates is now more urgent than ever.
“You have men and women in our prison system who are scholars, they're pioneers, they’re educators, they’re teachers, and a lot of them have languished in prison for three or four decades,” said Jose Saldana, with Release Aging People in Prison. The group believes the situation is critical and, for several months, they have been calling on Governor Andrew Cuomo to release people who are already parole eligible, or within a year of their release date, or who have severe underlying health conditions and are at risk of dying if they catch the virus.
Saldana served 38 years in prison and was released in 2018. His friend died in prison of COVID-19 over the summer, and another friend, who is elderly and incarcerated at Great Meadow Correctional, was just diagnosed this week.
“They have survived the HIV health crisis. They have survived the hepatitis health crisis. Tuberculosis outbreaks,” he said. “They have survived so many things and we can’t expect them to to survive this.”
The governor was asked whether a wider group of people would be released from prison, given the surge in cases but his office did not respond. The Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) has continued a policy implemented in the spring in response to the pandemic to release some people within 90 days of their official release date and those being detained on technical parole violations. Since mid-August, 1,282 people have been let go early, fewer than the 2,268 people released early in the months prior, according to statements from the Corrections Department.
In total, 27 people incarcerated in state prisons have died since the start of the pandemic. So far, the death rate remains lower than that of the general population, according to a Gothamist/WNYC analysis. But the current spike in deaths--nine in three weeks--is troubling to public health experts.
“The death rate will likely go up in prison, simply because we’re talking about an aging population where you would expect there to be a higher prevalence of underlying conditions,” said Daliah Heller with Vital Strategies, the global public health initiative, who has turned her focus to COVID-19 in prisons over the course of the outbreak. She said the looming prospect of the new, more contagious variant of COVID-19 showing up inside a prison made the situation even more dire.
“The urgency with this new strain in no places where people are living close together like prisons is enormous,” she said.
The governor’s office has not released guidance on when correctional staff and inmates could be vaccinated for COVID-19. According to the Centers for Disease Control, correction officers fall within the category of an essential worker and should be next in line to be vaccinated after healthcare workers and those living in long-term care facilities.
James Miller, a spokesman for the union that represents corrections officers in New York, said there’s been no indication of when vaccinations would occur.
“I don’t have a timeframe when it will become available for the officers working in the facilities,” he said.
A DOCCS spokeswoman said the agency is working with the state’s Department of Healthon a vaccine timeline. A state health department spokesman declined to say when inmates would be vaccinated and said corrections officers would be vaccinated “when they are eligible.”
While the first wave of COVID-19 infections mostly hit downstate prisons like Sing Sing, this fall infections began to spike at facilities across the state, starting with Elmira in Chemung County and Greene Correctional Facility in Greene County, followed by outbreaks in more than a dozen other prisons.
Guard tower and barbed wire fencing stand outside Sing Sing, in Ossining, N.Y.
“That reflects what’s going on in the community,” said Sophie Gebreselassie, staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society’s Prisoners Rights Project. Correction officers and civilians can bring the virus into the prisons, sickening inmates, and they can catch it in prisons and bring it out, fueling outbreaks in the surrounding community, as was the case in Greene County, according to local officials.
“That’s one of the many reasons why New Yorkers should care about what’s going on behind prison walls,” she said. “The virus does not respect barbed wire.”
In an attempt to keep the virus out of prisons, visitors are currently not allowed. However, staff coming in and out of prisons daily are not required to get tested regularly, though a voluntary testing plan is expected to begin on January 11th, about ten months after New York’s statewide shutdown. And, according to the state corrections officers union, rapid tests are available at some facilities with outbreaks.
Currently, the largest ongoing outbreaks are occuring at Woodbourne Correctional Facility in Sullivan County, where 148 people have been diagnosed with COVID-19 in the last three weeks, and at Coxsackie Correctional in Greene County, with 113 new infections, though there are hundreds of additional infections at about 15 other state facilities.
Marvin Lewis, 64, was released in August from Woodbourne Correctional Facility in Sullivan County, after serving 39 years in prison. Woodbourne evaded a major outbreak last spring, but Lewis said he now fears for his older friends he left behind, many of whom live in dorm-style settings with dozens of others.
“Eventually, Woodbourne was gonna have to take a lick,” he said. “Guys are just fearful. Guys are afraid and they’re looking for some relief to the Governor and the parole board and the legislature.”
Since the start of the pandemic, DOCCS said it has removed about 3,000 top bunks in dormitories in order to create more distance between inmates.
At Adirondack Correctional Facility, where the state moved around 100 elderly inmates in June, there was a recent scare. In late December, a social worker tested positive for COVID-19, sending two dozen inmates she had met with into quarantine, several men at the facility told Gothamist/WNYC.
“We're not safe in this facility, period!” wrote 62-year-old Dexter Bartley, in an email sent from his quarantine cell in late December. He later tested negative for COVID-19.
John Cavanaugh, who is serving 12 years to life for burglary at the same facility, told Gothamist/WNYC in a phone call that he was scheduled to meet with the infected social worker but missed the appointment. The Legal Aid society filed a federal class action lawsuit on behalf of men at the facility Friday, alleging the state hailed failed to implement basic protections.
“I was very lucky,” said the 65-year-old who has HIV. “I’m in a real high-risk category, I get nervous with that, but I try to protect myself to the best of my ability.”
Inmates who test positive or who are exposed to people who test positive are put in isolation, according to DOCCS.
Up until late December, the state had only been testing inmates who had COVID-19 symptoms or those who had been exposed to someone confirmed to have the virus. A new plan put in place on December 21th, includes testing “a number of incarcerated individuals” each day from different housing units, though the state hasn’t specified how many additional people that would entail.
“Throughout the COVID-19 public health emergency, the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision has worked in consultation with the NYS Department of Health (DOH) and followed facts and science to protect staff and the incarcerated population,” department spokeswoman Rachel Connors said.
Data analysis by Jake Dobkin.
