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Watch: LAS Attorney Mathew Finston Featured in NYT Video on COVID-19 and City Jails

A video released by The New York Times depicts the plight of vulnerable inmates trapped in New York City’s jail system amid the COVID-19 outbreak, and the heartbreaking effects the situation is having on both them and their families.

The city has struggled for weeks to control the rate of infection among detainees – a battle that has revealed administrative dysfunction and a profound lack of the material resources needed to stem the wave of infection inundating inmates and staff alike.

Mathew Finston, a staff attorney in The Legal Aid Society’s Parole Revocation Defense Unit appears in the clip and speaks to the severe situation faced by incarcerated New Yorkers. “Prisons, jails are acting as incubators for the virus,” he tells the publication.

Watch the full video below: