We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.
THIRD WAVE BREAKING?
Over the past few weeks, the BOP’s official COVID-19 count has not been climbing with the rest of the nation’s, but late last week, the numbers took off, suggesting a third wave may be breaking over the BOP as well as the rest of the country.
As of last night, the BOP reported 2,418 sick inmates, up a whopping 24% from the Friday before. There are a record 953 sick staff, up 5% last week. Ominously, six federal inmates died last week, including four at MCFP Springfield (Missouri), one at FCI Big Spring (Texas), and one in a private prison.
The current outbreak at FCI Fort Dix illustrates the virulence of COVID. WHYY Radio reported last week that “in October no inmates tested positive. On Thursday, there were 214 positive cases, according to a report from the Federal Bureau of Prisons. It’s the second-highest amount of active cases out of every system in the country.”
After an inmate complained to a federal court that Elkton prisoners transferred to Fort Dix “were placed in a unit that later had 10 inmates test positive for COVID-19,” a federal judge last week ordered the government to “provide details on how the prison has mitigated the spread of COVID-19.”
The Appeal last week ran an interview with Dr. Homer Venters, who has provided expert testimony in several suits against the BOP on COVID in prisons, most recently at Lompoc. Venters was especially critical of the availability of health services:
All these detention settings have ‘sick call’ and that’s the primary way for people to report COVID symptoms and get care. But when you talk to incarcerated people, they routinely tell you that their sick call requests go unanswered, or they have to submit multiple sick call requests just to get a response, or they may get a response that says, ‘Here’s some Tylenol,’ but it isn’t really an assessment or care for COVID. In some cases, those sick call requests get thrown out. And so we have this group of people who, when they seek care for COVID-19, they must use this process to access care. It’s a system that’s broken.
The current COVID hotspots in the BOP system are Fort Dix, Bastrop, Springfield, Tucson, Thompson and Butner, all with over 100 inmate cases each. As of yesterday, the BOP reports it has tested 48.8% of all inmates. The positivity rate remains at 25.6%.
The Appeal, Coronavirus in Jails and Prisons (November 6, 2020)
WHYY Radio, COVID-19 outbreak inside Fort Dix prison is spreading (November 7, 2020)
Burlington County Times, U.S. attorneys for Fort Dix ordered to detail COVID-19 response; cases at prison top 200 (November 5, 2020)
Memorandum Order, R.24, November 3, 2020, Whiteside v. Fort Dix Federal Prison, Case No 1:20cv5544 (Dist. New Jersey)
– Thomas L. Root