For the first time in months, Westchester County Jail
in Valhalla is restarting in-person non-contact visitation on Nov. 16.
Corrections officials say coronavirus cases are under
control in Westchester, despite new concerns of cases rising both in New York
and nationally.
At
last check, none of the 600-plus inmates and 700-plus staff at the jail had the virus,
according to the department.
The department agreed to let News 12 inside the intake
area to show how they screen new inmates.
"When
we started finding out about COVID, we
had to really come up with some strong protocols on quarantining inmates and
working with medical,” says Leandro Diaz of Westchester County Jail’s operation
department.
Strict protocols begin with booking, where medical
staff perform health screenings and check the temperatures of incoming inmates.
The jail also implements reduced-capacity protocols at
all its holding cells.
Inmates are then brought into quarantine isolation
areas. There are separate floors for new inmates who are also tested on their
third day at the facility.
If they test negative on their seventh day, they are
then relocated to a secondary unit. When they are in that unit, only one inmate
can be out one at a time for one hour to take a shower and take care of other personal
things.
"We want to kind of limit the amount of exposure
they have between each other,” says Diaz. "We increased the pay for our
inmate workers just to incentivize more cleaning."
Then inmate workers who have already been
pre-screened, are healthy and tested negative, clean and disinfect surfaces
before the next inmate is allowed out.
Inmates are tested on their third day in jail.
The process is lengthy and labor-intensive, but once
inmates make it through a 14-day period, they are let into the general
population. Each housing unit is at 50% capacity to social distance.
Correction officials say they only had seven positive
cases stemming from new inmates, but the virus did not spread outside those
individuals.