Attorneys representing the Federal Bureau of Prisons agreed Friday to provide a plan to expand access to legal calls at Manhattan’s Metropolitan Correctional Center and Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center, in response to calls for expansion from the Federal Defenders of New York.
The plan will include increased access to videoconferences while the facilities are closed to in-person visits amid the coronavirus pandemic, Assistant U.S. Attorney Seth Eichenholtz of the Eastern District of New York said during a status conference Friday.
Sean Hecker of Kaplan Hecker & Fink, who is representing the Federal Defenders, has said that each facility will soon need to hold at least 10 videoconferences per day of at least one hour, a major increase from the current average of four 30-minute video calls per day at each facility.
Read this article at the New York Law Journal here.