With our first couple of weeks of social distancing and isolation on the outside in the books, COVID-19 has hit Rikers Island. An investigator working on the island died a couple days ago of COVID-19 complications, and I think about 20 inmates and/or staff have now contracted the virus. The DOC is now trying, about two weeks late, to institute its own social isolation policy, but in order to do so they have to do the thing they’ve been resisting for months and years now: decarcerate.
Two days ago, NYC Board of Correction released a memo announcing the following:
DOC and CHS, along with City partners, must work with the Chief Judge of New York State, Governor Cuomo, District Attorneys, and the Defense Bar to begin identifying and releasing people this week, prioritizing:
• People who are over 50;
• People who have underlying health conditions, including lung disease, heart disease, diabetes, cancer, or a weakened immune system
• People detained for administrative reasons (including failure to appear and parole violations); and
• People serving “City Sentences” (sentences of one year or less).
This will further decimate the population I serve in my Friday workshops, and I couldn’t be happier. Every single person I serve at my facility fits at least one, if not most, of these criteria. As I’ve said in the previous couple of weeks, I made the difficult decision with my co-facilitators to suspend programming two weeks ago not for my own well-being, but for theirs. Keeping a whole bunch of people who are particularly vulnerable to the effects of the coronavirus in close proximity to each other is cruel and inhumane, if not unusual in our current criminal justice system. It took, in fact, a freak pandemic to get the carceral apparatus to loosen the reins.
The announcement from the Board of Correction is truly one of the most rewarding documents I’ve read for anyone concerned about the relationship between public health and pre-trial detention, and the two-page document deserves a full read. I’ve included it below.
But, in a time when speed could be the difference between life and death, the DOC is dragging their heels. Yesterday I spoke with the wife of Junior Wilson, whose plight I’ve detailed in previous dispatches and who fits the first three bullet points above, and she told me that some officials came into Junior’s wing last night, told everybody the criteria for coronavirus-related release, then seemingly chose three guys at random while leaving a plethora of men fitting the criteria without explanation. I asked her, the next time he called, to have him write down the names of every person in his wing who fits any of the criteria in the document. I then called a colleague at Just Leadership USA, an advocacy and accountability group working with the Mayor’s Office on Criminal Justice (MOCJ) and the Board of Correction to hold both agencies accountable, and asked if she would like those names, with Junior’s at the top of the list.
Junior did his part, and now Just Leadership is doing theirs. Hopefully, any hour now, Junior and everyone else who fits these criteria will be released and given the social support necessary to get shelter and care during this pandemic. In any case, what a strange, unexpected turn in this COVID-19 world event.
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