N.Y. halfway house hit by coronavirus balked at judge’s order to release at-risk inmate, his lawyers say

“I went down on more than one occasion to the desk to let the staff there know that there were sick men in my room,” said Campagna, who is finishing a 40-month sentence for conspiracy to traffic weapons. “Both of the times I went down there, I got pretty much the same answer, which was they’re grown men. If they are feeling bad enough they could call an ambulance themselves.”
A judge granted Campagna’s request for immediate release, but when Campagna presented the order to staff at the reentry center, he said, they stalled.
CORE Services Group, a private entity that runs Brooklyn Residential Reentry Center, did not respond to requests for comment.
Halfway houses for federal convicts are emerging as a gray area in the coronavirus crisis, even as thousands of jail and prison inmates nationwide have been released in a desperate effort to contain the spread of the virus. The houses are operated by contractors for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, an arm of the Justice Department, potentially complicating efforts for …continued .
[Source: Washington Post]