![38 Positive for Coronavirus at Rikers, NYC Jails](http://townsquare.media/site/41/files/2020/03/GettyImages-1188739673.jpg?w=630&h=420&zc=1&s=0&a=t&q=89&w=980&q=75)
38 Positive for Coronavirus at Rikers, NYC Jails
The board overseeing New York City’s jails urged officials to start releasing vulnerable populations and those being held on low-level offenses as the coronavirus outbreak hit the notorious Rikers Island complex and nearby jails — infecting at least 38 people. Another inmate, meanwhile, became the first in the country to test positive in a federal jail. “Fewer people in the jails will save lives and minimize transmission among people in custody as well as staff,” Board of Correction interim chairwoman Jacqueline Sherman wrote in a letter to New York’s criminal justice leaders this weekend. “Failure to drastically reduce the jail population threatens to overwhelm the City jails’ healthcare system as well its basic operations.”
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