When getting arrested is a death sentence

By Tess Cohen

Three unnamed men died of COVID-19 on Rikers Island in March of 2020, according to a heavily redacted draft report from the Board of Correction, a watchdog for New York jails and prisons. As heartbreaking as it is unsurprising, the report details an utter failure to create space for social distancing, provide masks, or give appropriate medical treatment to New Yorkers who are incarcerated. 

In all likelihood if inspections and reports are done at New York State’s prisons, we will learn of similar, and quite possibly worse, failures in the state prison system. When COVID-19 first hit, the New York City undertook efforts to reduce its jail population, though these efforts have now been undone as a backlog of cases and rollbacks of bail reforms have increased the number of people held at Rikers back to pre-COVID levels. The State of New York, however, did not even take these initial steps. Despite calls from advocacy groups, there were minimal efforts by the state prison system to use the various mechanisms available to it to release individuals at high risk. The results of this inaction are devastating, with 6,076 incarcerated individuals contracting COVID-19 in New York State prisons. 34 have died.

Despite the known risk to people who are incarcerated from COVID-19, New York State has refused to add incarcerated individuals to its list of people eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine. Correctional officers and people who live in other group settings are eligible for the vaccine, but those who are incarcerated are not. 

For anyone familiar with the criminal justice system the State’s failure to act is tragically familiar. It reflects the harsh reality that after a person is incarcerated, whether for a technical parole violation, pending trial or after conviction, the state consistently treats that person as someone whose life matters less due solely to their incarceration. People in prison are routinely denied health care even in an ideal circumstances, and during the COVID-19 pandemic the state has and continues to fail those who are incarcerated. There is no public health justification for denying incarcerated individuals’ access to a vaccine that is being given to people living in group settings and working in prisons. There is only the political reality that the state has decided that incarcerated people do not deserve life-saving treatment. 

Morally, the State has an absolute duty to protect those it chooses to imprison, but the reality, as our own practice shows all too often, is far removed from that ideals. COVID-19 has thrown this reality into sharp relief, and highlighted New York and the nation’s continuing failure to protect the health of those in prison.