We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.
TELL US HOW WE’RE DOING
The Dept of Justice Office of Inspector General announced last week that it would be conducting a second survey of BOP staff and a first survey of inmates to determine how well the BOP performed during the pandemic.
The results of the surveys should be illuminating.
And how are things now? As of last Friday, the BOP said it has given two doses of vaccine to about 35% of all inmates, and about 49% of staff. About 126 inmates are sick with COVID-19, and 164staff, with COVID still present in 67% of facilities, if BOP numbers can be believed.
But can the numbers be believed? The Marshall Project and Associated Press, which jointly have been tracking how many people are being sickened and killed by COVID-19 in prisons across the country and within each state since March 2020, have given up on BOP numbers, warning that “our understanding of the full toll of the pandemic on incarcerated people is limited by the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ policy of removing cases and deaths from its reports in recent months. As a result, we cannot accurately determine new cases or deaths in federal prisons, which have had more people infected than any other system.”
Another federal inmate died of COVID last week, this one at FMC Devens. Paul Archambault contracted COVID-19 at the end of December but was declared “recovered” ten days later. The “recovery” label appears to have benefited record-keeping more than Mr. Archambault. Like a number of others before him, he died of the COVID-19 from which he had recovered.
In New York last week, U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla granted compassionate release to an inmate at MCC Manhattan, ruling that a key part of her sentence was addiction treatment and care for other ailments. The judge said the BOP hasn’t provided it to the inmate, who was serving a sentence for a cocaine conspiracy.
“Due to the extreme lockdown conditions at the [Metropolitan Correctional Center] and [Metropolitan Detention Center], the inmate has been unable to receive mental health care, drug abuse treatment, and other important services that the Court envisioned her receiving while incarcerated,” the judge wrote. “The Court believes these services to be critical to her physical and mental health, and to her ability to reenter society as a productive and law-abiding citizen.”
DOJ Inspector General, Surveys of BOP Federal Prison Staff and Inmates (April 28, 2021)
The Marshall Project, A State-by-State Look at Coronavirus in Prisons (April 30, 2021)
BOP, Inmate Death at FMC Devens (April 29, 2021)
New York Daily News, Judge, inmate slam conditions at NYC federal jails in pandemic’s 13th month (April 26, 2021)
– Thomas L. Root