After LIC Inmate's Coronavirus Death, Lack Of Testing Persists

LONG ISLAND CITY, QUEENS — No one currently housed inside Queensboro Correctional Facility has been tested for the new coronavirus, including in the unit where an inmate who died of the virus was living, according to state data and court records.

New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision data as of Wednesday indicates that no one currently inside the Long Island City prison has been tested since an inmate there died of COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, on April 14.

A spokesperson for the corrections department told Patch that's because no one else has met the criteria for testing, defined as exhibiting COVID-19 symptoms or, more broadly, "if facts and circumstances warrant," as determined by a medical clinician.

Five people previously incarcerated at Queensboro were transferred to Sing Sing Correctional Facility after testing positive for the virus, the agency told Patch in April, but a spokesperson declined to say when those five were tested.

"The testing process for incarcerated individuals is currently the same for those in prison as it is for those in the community," the spokesperson wrote in an email.

The lack of testing is particularly worrisome to those housed in the unit 5-S, where 60-year-old Leonard Carter was housed before his death, and its neighboring unit 5-N, according to a writ of habeas corpus filed this week in Queens County Supreme Court.

"DOCCS' response to that death was to briefly quarantine the residents of Dorm 5-S," the petition says, using an acronym for the state corrections department. "No additional residents of Dorm 5-S or of Dorm 5-N were tested after that inmate's death, despite their close proximity in the days and weeks preceding his death."

According to Jeremy Beazer, an inmate in 5-N who is named in the lawsuit, residents of the two units eat meals together in the prison's dining area, where they sit less than six feet apart from one another and where surfaces aren't cleaned before and after each use, his petition says. They sleep in dorms where beds are just two to three feet apart from each other.

A spokesperson for the Legal Aid Society declined to comment for this article and declined Patch's request to interview the attorney who filed the petition.

Not including Queensboro, 11 state-run prisons had not tested any current inmates for the virus as of Wednesday, according to Patch's analysis of state corrections department data.

That's more than a fifth of the state-run prisons included in the dataset.

Criminal justice advocates say the lack of coronavirus testing inside New York prisons is concerning and claim that even inmates who experience COVID-19 symptoms like fever aren't getting tested.

"That shows the disregard for human life inside these facilities, as if they're not worthy of a test," said Tatiana Hill, an organizer with VOCAL-NY who is part of a campaign to get Gov. Andrew Cuomo to grant clemency to inmates like those inside Queensboro. "People are not viewing them as human beings."

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