At least 38 people have tested positive for coronavirus inside New York City jails, officials said, signaling the largest outbreak in American jails since the pandemic began. For weeks, activists and health officials have feared the virus would spread rapidly throughout the country’s prison system.

Jacqueline Sherman, the interim chairwoman of the New York City Board of Correction, sent a letter to state and city officials on Saturday urging them to release inmates at higher risk of dying from an infection and to “rapidly” decrease the prison population.

“Fewer people in the jails will save lives and minimize transmission among people in custody as well as staff. Failure to drastically reduce the jail population threatens to overwhelm the City jails’ healthcare system as well (as) its basic operations,” Sherman wrote in the letter, which was addressed to district attorneys from the city’s five …continued .
[Source: CBS News]