We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

COVID-19 AIN’T GOIN’ AWAY

The New York Times reported last week that “cases of the coronavirus in prisons and jails across the United States have soared in recent weeks, even as the overall daily infection rate in the nation has remained relatively flat.” Certainly, the BOP’s own numbers suggest that little progress has been made in combatting COVID-19 in the BOP, and the stats contain an ominous sign.

Active inmate COVID-19 cases increased 9% to 1,351, but only one additional inmate death was recorded. What should worry the BOP, however, is a 9% increase in facilities reporting active coronavirus cases, from 64 to 70 prisons (well more than half of all BOP facilities). A month ago, the facilities count was 52. Two months ago, it was at 46.

The BOP reports that it has completed nearly 19,000 inmate COVID-19 tests, and one out of three inmates has tested positive. Yet the testing is a mere drop in the bucket: 86% of all federal inmates have yet to be tested.

A June 18 Marshall Project/VICE News collaboration blasted the BOP’s management of the pandemic. Based on over 100 interviews and reviews of dozens of internal BOP memos, emails, and other documents, the story reported that

•   “staff ignored or minimized prisoners’ COVID-19 symptoms, and mixed the sick and healthy together in haphazard quarantines”;

•   thousands of prisoners being transferred around country in February and early March transmitted the pandemic from prison to prison, according to BOP records;

•   BOP staff felt pressured to report to work after being exposed to sick prisoners;

•  the BOP failed to follow its own pandemic response plan by spacing out prisoners;

•   the agency deliberately limited testing so that it would not have to report positive cases; and

•  prisoner quarantines were set up in “filthy buildings that had been vacant for years or in tents that flooded during rainstorms.”

The report said BOP Director Michael Carvajal refused an interview request, but a BOP spokesperson – while declining to comment on some of the allegations – maintained the agency’s response to the pandemic “was carefully planned and coordinated, and that it took an array of precautions to contain the outbreak.”

New York Times, Coronavirus Cases Rise Sharply in Prisons Even as They Plateau Nationwide (June 16, 2020)

ABC, More than 1 out of 3 tested federal inmates were positive for coronavirus (June 16)

The Marshall Project, “I Begged Them To Let Me Die”: How Federal Prisons Became Coronavirus Death Traps. (June 18)

– Thomas L. Root