Stefen Short, Supervising Attorney with The Legal Aid Society’s Prisoners’ Rights Project, was quoted in an op-ed in The New York Times taking on the failure of New York State to protect the safety of people sent to prison at the height of NYC’s COVID-19 crisis – amounting to a de facto death sentence.

The op-ed – written by Steven Paulikas, an Episcopal priest whose parishioner died after contracting COVID-19 in New York State prison while serving a two-year sentence – derides the lack of clarity as to whether Department of Corrections and Community Supervision or New York Governor Andrew Cuomo are responsible for these lethal policy failures.

“If we don’t know who’s making the decisions, we don’t know who to engage,” said Short, who was part of the team that helped litigate the case brought against the state ensuring that prisoners would have access to the vaccine.

Read the full piece here.