The “Disturbing” Prison Conditions Facing Chanel Lewis
The Nation, July 11, 2023: The “Disturbing” Prison Conditions Facing Chanel Lewis
“In early June, I received an e-mail from Jennifer Scaife, the executive director of the Correctional Association of New York (CANY), an organization authorized by New York State law to conduct independent prison oversight. The e-mail was about Chanel Lewis, whom I wrote about in a 2022 article for The Nation, ‘When The NYPD Gets Desperate.’ In 2019, Lewis was convicted of the 2016 murder of Karina Vetrano. In my piece, I confirmed that during the Vetrano homicide investigation the NYPD illegally used a private and secretive DNA lab to conduct unproven forensics and then failed to disclose it during Lewis’s first trial, which ended in a mistrial, or his second, which ended in a life sentence. ‘We have recently received some disturbing reports about his circumstances,’ Scaife wrote.
“Lewis was then incarcerated at Great Meadow Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison a few hundred miles north of New York City. In an ensuing conversation, Scaife explained that on June 1, CANY received a call from another incarcerated person at Great Meadow alleging that Lewis had effectively been held in solitary confinement for three months and that for at least six days the toilet in his cell wasn’t functioning. ‘Most of our calls are an incarcerated person calling on behalf of themselves,’ Scaife said. ‘It strikes me that if this is being reported by somebody else, this good samaritan, that the circumstances must be pretty bad.’
“The information in the June 1 call was in line with a letter that Lewis himself sent to CANY last fall alleging that he was being mistreated at Great Meadow and asking for advocacy and media attention in order to change his living conditions. It’s also in line with what is generally known about Great Meadow. In 2021, Victoria Law wrote a piece for The Nation, ‘The Worst Prison In New York,’ about this prison. At the time, Law reported, Great Meadow had ‘the highest rate of suicides of any New York prison, the highest rate of suicide attempts, the highest rate of self-harm, and one of the highest rates of recorded staff violence.’”
Additional reading:
NY1, July 13, 2021: Community leaders add more pressure on Queens District Attorney to reopen murder case against Chanel Lewis
Gothamist, April 1, 2019: Bombshell Letter: NYPD Conducted A Bogus, 'Racialized' Investigation In Chanel Lewis Case
New York Focus, November 10, 2021: “The Worst Prison in New York State”
