The Legal Aid Society, in a recent letter to the New York City Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS), decried the lack of sanitary conditions in detention areas within local courthouses where Legal Aid clients and many New Yorkers are regularly held. Specifically, public defenders are calling on DCAS to immediately update the ventilation and airflow conditions and implement other measures to keep clients safe from COVID-19.

The Legal Aid Society began requesting improvements to courthouse detention areas, including where individuals are held pre-arraignment and where they are held to meet with attorneys before court appearances, almost a full year ago, but DCAS and other city agencies have not taken the measures necessary to keep people safe, as reported by the New York Daily News.

“It’s just a bunch of finger-pointing and nobody doing what is really very simple, serious updates to air filters that they’ve already done in dozens of courthouses throughout the city in public areas,” said Emma Goodman, Staff Attorney with the Criminal Defense Practice’s Special Litigation Unit at The Legal Aid Society.

“I think it tells us what we already know, which is that the lives of people that are charged with crimes are not valued. It is playing out in a very stark and very visible way in the courthouses as well as in the jails and prisons around the state.”