NOTE: If you received a request to sign-on to this letter, we have an update: DOCCS has reversed its policy. DOCCS will re-review people with serious mental health concerns incarcerated on technical parole violations to determine if they can be released. In light of this news, we are updating our letter and will circulate it tomorrow for your review. Thanks for your support!

Contact jparish@urbanjustice.org with questions.
________________________________________________________________________________________

Dear Governor Cuomo:

New York State must stop warehousing people with serious mental health concerns in prisons and jails. As COVID-19 threatens to spread like a wildfire through these facilities, people with mental health disabilities must be included in the State’s efforts to release vulnerable people and reduce the total jail and prison populations. We are appalled that in implementing your directive to release people incarcerated on technical parole violations, the NYS Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) categorically excluded people with serious mental health concerns. This blatant discrimination against people with mental health disabilities is shocking.

What’s more, mental health disabilities place these individuals at high risk of serious complications from COVID-19, and is a reason for their release—not discrimination, exclusion, and continued confinement. Indeed, an extensive body of empirical research has established that serious mental health concerns, and attendant chronic stress, anxiety, or depression compromise the immune system’s ability to defend the body against viral infections. Research suggests that anxiety and related disorders may make people vulnerable to various medical conditions, including respiratory illnesses. Depression may also affect the immune system and contribute to prolonged infection.

For far too long, prisons and jails have been the dumping ground for people with mental health needs. New York has failed to provide robust, person-centered support for thousands of New Yorkers with the greatest needs. Now in the midst of this pandemic, having a serious mental health concern is actually keeping people in prison.

As disturbing as DOCCS’s position is, it is not surprising given that New York State:
- Continues to keep people with mental health concerns in solitary confinement;
- Has a prison suicide rate that is 88% higher than the average rate of suicide in prisons across the country; and
- Keeps people with mental health needs in prison beyond their release dates because there is no available housing in the community.

As the current crisis demonstrates, people with serious mental health needs are left out of New York’s move toward decarceration. Over the last decade, the prison population has decreased significantly while the percentage of people on the mental health caseload continues to grow. In New York City, the jail population has dropped by 20% during this crisis, but people with mental health needs are not being released at the same rate – instead increasing from 43% to 49% of the population. People with serious mental health concerns often become and remain incarcerated because of the scarcity of adequate community housing and supports. Without readily available resources in the community, judges, parole commissioners, and DOCCS choose to keep people with serious mental health needs behind bars.

We call on you to take immediate action to require DOCCS to treat incarcerated people with mental health needs like other people and not prevent their release based on their disabilities. They should be released with housing and other supports to make this transition. During this crisis, New York City is providing hotel rooms and reentry services for people released from jail. Similar arrangements to provide for the needs of people with mental health concerns can be developed across the state.

Then, you must address the public health crisis of imprisoning people with serious mental health needs in environments that exacerbate their illnesses. This will require:
- Enacting the Humane Alternatives to Long-Term (HALT) Solitary Confinement Act as an essential first step in protecting the health of this population;
- Diverting from incarceration and releasing from prison as many people with serious mental health needs as possible; and
- Investing in appropriate community-based housing and other supports and ensuring that they are available to people with the most significant mental health challenges.

People with serious mental health concerns can and do recover, but they need stability, safety, and support – all of which are absent from prisons and jails. For those who need support upon re-entry, New York can and should provide resources that promote recovery, such as care coordination and peer support, and assist people in reintegrating into the community. Now is the time to align public safety and public health and provide for the needs of people with serious mental health challenges so that they can be integrated into our community not exiled from it.