'Like a f---ing slave ship': Lawyer details horrific conditions at Rikers Island jails amid COVID-19

[babylonsister]

'Like a f---ing slave ship': Lawyer details horrific conditions at Rikers Island jails amid COVID-19
Lauren Floyd
Daily Kos Staff
Tuesday March 24, 2020 · 7:25 PM EDT


New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio responded to passionate pleas from activists to release low-level offenders amid the COVID-19 pandemic with a plan to do exactly that. On Tuesday, the mayor announced the planned release of about 300 nonviolent inmates from Rikers Island, according to CNBC. Officials had already reported at least 38 confirmed cases of the virus at the jail complex and in other nearby jails, according to Time magazine. Scott Hechinger, a Brooklyn public defender, described conditions at Rikers as horrific in a long Twitter thread Monday. "PLEASE READ: Conditions on Rikers are unimaginably bad. My colleague has spoken to a few people trapped inside. What they told her is horrifying,” he said in one tweet. “Unless @NYGovCuomo , @NYCMayor , & all DAs do something ASAP, we're looking at mass death."

Hechinger reported inmates being served meals on "dirty food trays" and sleeping "close enough to reach out and touch the next person." "There is one toilet for every 29 people trapped on Rikers Island right now," he tweeted. “’It is like a f---ing slave ship,’” Hechinger quoted a colleague of his saying. “It makes me want to f---ing cry. They can't even wash their hands. It is insane that this day & age we treat human beings this way. This is shameful."

Hechinger described how inmates were forced to sit four to a table despite social distancing urgings and how kitchen staffers failed to wear masks. He even said Rikers staff members did not clean the general areas following the first reported COVID-19 case at the prison Saturday. “People are being housed with others with flu-like symptoms and there is no recourse,” Hechinger said.

The attorney’s social media messages are part of a larger effort calling on authorities to release low-level offenders, following in the footsteps of at least a dozen local jails in California, New Jersey, Ohio, and Texas. Maya Ragsdale, a Miami public defender, said she observed similarly disheartening conditions during professional visits to one of the city's jails Monday. “The ppl I met are caged in dirty cells w/ 50-60 ppl, forced to share toilets, showers, sinks, laundry,” she tweeted Tuesday. “Many stay in bed all day b/c of fear about who may be carrying the virus.” Meanwhile, one guard “cavalierly” called COVID-19 fears “overblown,” revealing no plans to change how he does his job, Ragsdale said. The attorney described multiple clients who had died in Miami-Dade County Corrections’ custody "due to medical neglect during normal times." "Now, pretrial incarceration will be a death sentence..." Ragsdale said in another tweet. Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle has said her office is working on a process to release inmates held for misdemeanor and nonviolent felony offenses, according to Florida Politics.

more...

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/3/24/1930802/--Like-a-f-ing-slave-ship-Lawyer-details-horrific-conditions-at-Rikers-Island-jails-amid-COVID-19

[Rorey]

1. Barbaric

We should be better than that, as a society.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

2. Inhumane.

[Celerity]

3. MAGAts LOVE this shit!!!

[BeckyDem]

4. Disgraceful and dangerous. This serves no one well.