New York lawmakers to make prison visits amid push for ‘justice roadmap’ and COVID vaccinations
ALBANY — State legislators seeking a closeup view of how the pandemic affects prisoners and the people who house them plan to start a series of unannounced visits to New York correctional institutions this weekend — the first such tours since the COVID crisis began.
Sen. Julia Salazar (D-Brooklyn), the new chair of the Senate corrections committee, and Assemblywoman Carmen de la Rosa (D-Harlem) will tour an upstate facility on Saturday as they urge officials to speed up vaccinations for inmates and call for the passage of a legislative package dubbed the “Justice Roadmap.”
Salazar said the visits will give lawmakers a chance to see first hand how prisons are handling the coronavirus crisis amid a recent spike in infections.
The tours will also allow legislators to refine their argument for passing a slate of bills centering around criminal justice reforms that could overhaul parole, legalize marijuana and end solitary confinement and some court fees, she said.
“We’ve gotten sort of mixed information from (Department of Corrections and Community Supervision) and just reports from the inside,” Salazar told the Daily News. “So I think it will be really meaningful for myself and other legislators to see first-hand the conditions in the facilities.”
Throughout February, several legislators are planning visits to a series of state prisons, jails, and federal immigration detention facilities as part of a push by groups including the Center for Community Alternatives and New York Communities for Change.
Marvin Mayfield, the statewide organizer for the Center for Community Alternatives, said the visits will be a positive step towards passing reforms.
“It is particularly powerful for me, as someone who has spent time behind the wall to see legislators making these visits to their incarcerated constituents,” Mayfield said. “There’s no worse feeling than sitting in a cage at the mercy of someone who doesn’t care if you live or die.
“These prison visits show that our lives, matter too,” he added.
The “Justice Roadmap” package includes a host of measures such as the long-stalled Human Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement, or HALT, Act, which could dramatically curtail the use of solitary confinement in the state.
It also covers the state’s renewed efforts to legalizes adult-use marijuana and a pair of bills that would grant parole to eligible people in prison unless they pose a clear risk of violating the law and allow inmates over 55 who have served 15 years or more of their sentences to apply for parole. Other bills deal with raising the age of juvenile delinquency and ending “predatory” court fees.
Sen. Gustavo Rivera (D-Bronx), the sponsor of the Fair and Timely Parole Act, will join colleagues in an visit late next month.
“It will be an opportunity to see things kind of unvarnished, to see what the reality is as much as we can,” he said. “These surprise visits are meant for us to bring attention to the “Justice Roadmap,” but also as legislators, to be able to kind of witness things firsthand and bring attention to the condition of people who are behind bars.”
A Corrections Department spokesman noted that under New York law, legislators can visit the state correctional facilities “even though visitation has been suspended for family and friends of the incarcerated population to protect our communities and our facilities from COVID-19.”
Since the pandemic began, the state has granted early release to 3,557 individuals, spokesman Thomas Mailey said.
In all, 791 individuals who have had their low-level parole violations cancelled and 2,754 individuals who committed non-violent, non-sex offenses and were within 90 days of their approved release date and 12 women who were pregnant or had just given birth were released.
Mailey also commended Gov. Cuomo for being “at the forefront of some of the nation’s most progressive criminal justice reforms” and reducing the prison population by more than 23,000 to 33,461 during his tenure in office.
