NY RELEASING PRISONERS WITH CORONA!

amother

Mon, Mar 23 2020, 6:18 pm

This is how Dems are “protecting” Americans....G-d help this country.

Jails Release Prisoners, Fearing Coronavirus Outbreak
Local governments across the U.S. are releasing thousands of inmates in an unprecedented effort to prevent a coronavirus outbreak in crowded jails and prisons.

Jails in California, New York, Ohio, Texas and at least a dozen other states are sending low-level offenders and elderly or sickly inmates home early due to coronavirus fears. At other jails and prisons around the country, officials are banning visitors, restricting inmates’ movement and screening staff.

The 2.2 million people behind bars in the country, and the guards who work with them, face unique risks due to the tight spaces in crowded conditions and strained health-care systems, according to experts. “We’re all headed for some dire consequences,” said Daniel Vasquez, a former warden of San Quentin and Soledad state prisons in California. “They’re in such close quarters—some double- and triple-celled—I think it’s going to be impossible to stop it from spreading.”

Prison staff in Pennsylvania, Michigan, New York and Washington state have tested positive for the virus, resulting in inmate quarantines. In Washington, D.C., a U.S. marshal who works in proximity to new arrestees tested positive for the virus, meaning dozens of defendants headed for jail could have been exposed. Two federal prison staffers have also tested positive.

On Saturday, the first federal inmate tested positive in a Brooklyn, N.Y., facility, according to the Bureau of Prisons. The same day, New York City’s Board of Correction, an independent oversight agency, sent a letter to city and state officials urging them to rapidly reduce the jail population, with a focus on people at highest risk of infection, pointing to more than 30 inmates and corrections employees who have tested positive for the virus. There have been no reported major outbreaks yet, but experts fear the coronavirus could overwhelm correctional facilities, particularly because there are more inmates than ever in the older demographic that is at greater risk. The number of people 55 or older in state and federal prisons reached 164,000 in 2016, more than tripling from 1999, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts.

To prevent the virus from spreading, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests separating symptomatic individuals. In correctional facilities, however, that can be “virtually impossible,” according to Homer Venters, former chief medical officer for New York City correctional health services. Many jails and prisons already need to separate numerous types of inmates, he noted, including pretrial and sentenced individuals, men and women, migrant detainees and the mentally ill. [WSJ]