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About 300 low-level offenders will be freed from city jails to curb the spread of coronavirus, Mayor de Blasio said Tuesday.
People convicted of misdemeanors and people convicted of non-violent felonies with less than a year left on their sentences will be shown the jailhouse doors, the mayor said.
De Blasio said he has been working closely with NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea, the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, the Department of Correction and district attorneys to come up with a list of people who are at high risk of contracting coronavirus and are at low risk of reoffending.
“It is a very complicated dynamic, it’s one that we’ve literally never dealt with before,” he said during a televised press conference Tuesday from City Hall.
“I’m listening to all the input … But I want to make very clear that I’m making the ultimate decisions, taking in the advice from all these different sources and doing what I think is the right thing for this city.”
The 300 people to be freed are in addition to another 75 prisoners already released in the hope of curbing the spread of COVID-19. As of Tuesday, 54 people in city custody and 30 Department of Correction staff members tested positive for coronavirus, officials said.
The rapid increase in confirmed cases means the mayor must move faster to get people out of jails before more of them get sick, said City Council Speaker Corey Johnson.
“(It’s) getting worse and worse and worse … It is dreadful, it is scary, and we are worsening the humanitarian crisis on Rikers Island by not addressing it quickly enough,” Johnson said in a phone call on Tuesday with reporters, politicians and criminal justice advocates prior to the mayor’s announcement.
“It’s critical — critical — that the de Blasio administration moves much faster than what’s happening right now,” he added. “We’ve seen the rapid spread across New York City and we know the spread is happening …This is a serious and dangerous and immediate health risk.”
The Legal Aid Society filed a suit in state Supreme Court on Tuesday calling for the release of 32 state parolees and other individuals who are being held in pretrial detention at city jails. Legal Aid also filed a lawsuit last week calling for the release of 116 other detainees.
De Blasio said the city is working with state government to potentially release hundreds of state parolees who are housed in city jails.
“We’ll be having that conversation to see if that is a group that can be acted on across the board or that needs to be handled in a more specified manner,” he said. “But certainly that is an area where we think we could find a number of people who may be able to be released quickly.”
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