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Anonymous ID: 2bfdc8 July 8, 2020, 10:31 a.m. No.9895507   🗄️.is 🔗kun

As of this May, in response to the coronavirus pandemic, all of the young people were transferred out of the facility: It will now serve as a nursing home prison.

In the last month, 96 elderly male prisoners have been transferred to the isolated Adirondack prison. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced the plan as a way to ensure safety for aging incarcerated people, who are particularly vulnerable to Covid-19 complications. The northerly New York region has seen some of the lowest coronavirus rates in the state. But, as of Wednesday morning, at least one person incarcerated at the prison had already tested positive for the coronavirus, local news reported.

For family members and justice advocates, the prison nursing home presents no less than a potential massacre. And what’s more, many of these elderly incarcerated people are now further removed from relatives and loved ones than they had been in previous facilities.

In response to the pandemic, only one reasonable option was available to the governor and the prison system when it came to elderly people serving state sentences: Release them all. This would not have been benign; it would have been sensible. The recidivism rates are almost negligible for elderly individuals who have served long-term sentences. Instead, the state implemented an elaborate, cruel, and potentially dangerous plan to keep older people behind bars, in the distant facility. Given the racism undergirding our prison system, the implications for already oppressed Black elders must not be overlooked. The majority of men who have been transferred to Adirondack are people of color and over half are Black.

“This plan runs directly counter to public health, racial justice, and criminal justice evidence, and instead promotes mass incarceration, family separation, racism, and the needless punishment of incarcerated older people,” said a June letter signed by over 80 social and racial justice organizations that was sent to Cuomo, New York Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie. “It also threatens to replicate the public health crisis experienced in nursing homes across the state.”

Approximately 6,000 nursing home patients in New York have died from Covid-19 complications — a sign of intolerable elder neglect on behalf of the state. Meanwhile, when the virus has entered prisons and jails, it has ravaged incarcerated populations. While New York has seen a dramatic drop in case numbers thanks to statewide lockdowns, and while it is true that the North Country has thus far avoided the worst of the pandemic — and there have as of yet been no recorded cases at Adirondack Correctional — the risks posed by prison conditions remain unacceptable. Yet again and again, the state has chosen punitive and carceral solutions in the face of an urgent need for mass decarceration.

 

https://theintercept.com/2020/07/08/elderly-prisoners-new-york-cuomo/