City prosecutors who ripped the mayor for the planned release of high-risk inmates amid the coronavirus crisis fail to “appreciate the public health disaster” unfolding at Rikers Island, according to the jail’s top doctor.
“I can assure you we were following the CDC guidelines before they were issued. We could have written them ourselves,” Ross MacDonald, the chief medical officer for Correctional Health Services, wrote in a series of tweets Monday night. “In essence we did, as they were wholly consistent with our plans as this virus approached.”
“Here’s the important part: infections in our jails are growing quickly despite these efforts.”
As of Monday, nearly 800 inmates have been in quarantine and the city’s jail system has nearly 200 confirmed cases.
The letter — signed by district attorneys from Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, The Bronx and Staten Island and special narcotics prosecutor Bridget Brennan — criticized the “haphazard process by which at-risk inmates are identified.”
Mayor Bill de Blasio said around 650 inmates have been released due to coronavirus concerns as of Sunday.
MacDonald took issue with the DAs’ call to “immediately reassure the public and the courts that the city’s jail system is capable of appropriately managing the health needs of the remaining inmates.”
“I can reassure my patients that I will get them the best possible care, but we expect that 20% of those infected will need our overburdened hospitals and 5% will need ventilators that many other citizens will also need,” he wrote.
“I can’t presume to tell you how to do your job, but neither should you presume to be experts in correctional health or corrections,” MacDonald added. “I am raising this alarm for a reason. I simply ask that in this time of crisis the focus remain on releasing as many vulnerable people as possible.”