Keeping our community safe: COVID-19 Updates

Osborne's offices are currently closed to the public. We continue to provide services to as many of our participants as possible through the use of technology and other safe practices and are updating our plans as new information becomes available. If you need up-to-date information about Osborne programs and services, please call 718-707-2798.

Read Osborne's March 16 communication about our work during the health emergency, here.

We are updating this page with news and information as it becomes available.

Critical announcements and calls to action: 

• New York State has suspended all in-person visits for people on parole. Read more.

• New York State has suspended visits to state prisons. Read more. 

• New York City has suspended visits to city jails. Read more. 
   
• Osborne's video visiting program is suspended through the end of March. We are working to restore video visiting as soon as possible.
   
• All New Yorkers applying for or already receiving public benefits like food stamps, cash assistance and rent payments, will no longer have to seek help in person for any reason. All services will be available online or over the phone. People needing help can go to nyc.gov/accesshra.
   

• #NoRollbacks: Call-in to legislators
  It is important to contact the Governor, Senate Majority Leader, Assembly Speaker, and your New York State Senator and Assemblymember to ask that changes to the bail and discovery laws not be included in the budget, as Governor Cuomo states he plans to do. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the new bail law must remain in place "as is" to ensure that people are not incarcerated, and thereby placed at high risk for COVID-19 exposure simply because they cannot afford bail.

  • Look up your Senator and Assemblymember here: https://openstates.org/ny/legislators/
  • Assembly Speaker Carl E. Heastie: (718) 654-6539
  • Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins: (914) 423-4031
  • Governor Cuomo: (518) 474-8390 or email https://www.governor.ny.gov/content/governor-contact-form
     

Related News and Information: 

March 25

• The Washington Post, "‘Disaster waiting to happen’: Thousands of inmates released as jails and prisons face coronavirus threat"

March 24

• CDC, "Interim Guidance on Management of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) in Correctional and Detention Facilities"
   

March 20

• Legal Aid Society, "Legal Aid Files Lawsuit to Release 116 Incarcerated New Yorkers at a high risk of COVID-19"
• New Yorker, "A Rikers Island Doctor Speaks Out to Save Her Elderly Patients from the Coronavirus"
   

March 18

• NY Times, "We Are Not a Hospital: A Prison Braces for Coronavirus"
• NY Post, "NYC to begin releasing inmates amid coronavirus outbreak"
• The Journal News, "Clemency is needed for incarcerated New Yorkers vulnerable to coronavirus"
   

March 17

• The Washington Post, "We Must Release Prisoners to stop the spread of coronavirus"
• New York Magazine, "Will Rikers Island Free Inmates Because of the Coronavirus?"
   

March 16

• NY Times, "An Epicenter of the Pandemic Will Be Jails and Prisons, if Inaction Continues"
• Huffington Post, "The Only Way To Protect Elderly Prisoners From Coronavirus Is To Release Them"
   

March 14

• The New Yorker, "How Prisons and Jails Can Respond to the Coronavirus"
   

March 13

• NPR, "Prisons And Jails Worry About Becoming Coronavirus 'Incubators"  
• Letter to Mayor Bill de Blasio, "Plan for Combatting COVID-19 in NYC Jails and Other Lock-up Facilities"