Illustration by Golden Cosmos for The New Yorker
Professor Natalie M. Chin, co-director of the Disability & Aging Justice Clinic, along with third-year law students, Amy Armstrong, Rose-Emma Lunderman, and Reena Novotnak, collaborated on a piece in Medium entitled “Gov. Cuomo Will Have Blood On His Hands: the Expendability of the Aging Prison Population in the Time of COVID-19” while working with a group of elderly, disabled and incarcerated clients.
David, an 80-year-old at-risk incarcerated client, has late-stage lung disease and was in danger of being moved out of medical isolation back into the Regional Medical Unit (RMU) where he was finally receiving the basic care he was denied for months.
Thanks to the advocacy of Chin and her student team, along with another advocacy group, David was placed in medical isolation in the RMU through Labor Day. Recently, however, the team found out keeping him there longer will require renewed effort, despite the evidence that contracting COVID-19 would likely be a death sentence for David.
Amy Armstrong, a legal intern at the DAJC, and co-author of this piece writes:
“As part of the DAJC, we had the opportunity to build relationships with four incarcerated, disabled elders in the New York State prison system. Prison authorities and state actors routinely told our clients that their lives didn’t matter, and, when COVID hit, it was clear that their lives were first on the chopping block. We successfully advocated for one client to temporarily remain in medical isolation. Recently, the prison made a dangerous decision in moving him back in with other prisoners, increasing his chances of contracting COVID and dying prematurely. We continue to advocate for David and all aging, disabled, incarcerated clients, as the Governor refuses to release large amounts of state prisoners most vulnerable to the virus.”
As of May 25th, 2020, there are 1,270 prison staff members and 492 incarcerated people with confirmed cases of COVID-19, and at the time of this article’s publication, there are 1129 prison staff members and 407 incarcerated people with confirmed cases of COVID-19. The numbers continue to increase exponentially; the governor’s office has failed to make significant strides in granting clemency for disabled, immunocompromised, and aging prisoners most susceptible to the coronavirus, despite pleas form healthcare experts and advocates.
While Cuomo announced plans to release people who were at least 55 years old and six months away from their parole date, most immunocompromised and aging prisoners do not fit the criteria of not being convicted of a violent felony or sex crime. The last time Cuomo granted clemency was on January 3, 2020, well before COVID-19 was identified as a threat to public health.
While elected officials are taking steps to release vulnerable populations from prisons and jails, incarcerated people in New York are still awaiting word on emergency clemency and release programs. On April 20, a coalition of advocates wrote Cuomo a detailed recommendation protocol for the immediate release of those most at-risk, but the call has gone unanswered.
Read the full article from Professor Chin,
Amy Armstrong, Rose-Emma Lunderman, and Reena Novotnak on Medium.
