New York’s Prisons Are Turning Into Senior-Citizen Centers
New York Magazine, December 23, 2021: New York’s Prisons Are Turning Into Senior-Citizen Centers
“Pleas for early release are a matter of life and death in the age of COVID. In the past week, two people perished at the Mohawk/Walsh prison hospice in central New York, marking a total of 39 prisoners killed by the virus while in state custody since the pandemic struck, according to the Department of Correction and Community Supervision. Fifteen DOCCS staffers have died from the disease as well.
“Those numbers are certain to rise. With the arrival of the highly infectious Omicron variant, the number of positive COVID cases among state prisoners recently shot up 35 percent in a single week, according to the Release Aging People in Prison Campaign.”
Additional reading:
AMNY, January 5, 2022: Manhattan DA Bragg advocates for parole justice and pledges to halt certain prosecutions drawing backlash
The Denver Post, January 2, 2022: Older people released from Colorado prisons struggle with health insurance, housing, study finds
The Marshall Project, December 17, 2021: ‘The Only Way We Get Out of There Is in a Pine Box’: Elderly, ailing and expensive, lifetime prisoners cost Louisiana taxpayers millions a year.
