We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.
CORONAVIRUS AND THE BOP
As of last night, the coronavirus (COVID-19) has sickened over 135,000 people worldwide. More than 4,900 people have died. Confirmed cases in the US exceed 1,700, with 31 deaths.
Yesterday, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-New York), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, wrote to Attorney General William Barr, demanding answers to 14 questions about BOP preparedness for the inevitable spread of COVID-19 to federal facilities. Nadler said he was “especially concerned because the incarcerated and justice-involved populations contain a number of groups that may be particularly vulnerable to COVID-19. In particular, health conditions that make respiratory diseases more dangerous are far more common in the incarcerated population than in the general U.S. population.”
The New York Daily News reported on Monday that the Federal Defenders – an organization of public defense attorneys who represent indigent defendants (the vast majority of criminal defendants in the federal system) – presented “a five-step plan they want the federal Bureau of Prisons to implement to handle coronavirus, including a comprehensive testing protocol and requesting that no new inmates be housed at the jails without being tested for the virus first.” The Defenders were focused on the troubled Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan and the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, which together hold about 2,300 inmates and pretrial detainees. The defense attorneys say there is a “lack of information and planning” relating to the disease in the facilities.
WXIN-TV, Indianapolis, reported yesterday that COVID-19 has spread to a central Indiana county jail correctional officer. Last week, ABC News reported that “Coronavirus suddenly exploded in China’s prisons last week, with reports of more than 500 cases spreading across five facilities in three provinces. Earlier this week in Iran, 54,000 inmates were temporarily released back into the country amid virus fears.” The Marshall Project has reported that it is only a matter of time before the virus reaches BOP facilities.
To minimize spread, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests avoiding close contact with people who are sick, covering your mouth with a tissue when you cough or sneeze, disinfecting frequently-used surfaces and washing your hands or using alcohol-based hand sanitizer. But these recommendations run up against the reality of prison life. Access to toilet paper or tissues is limited, there is no alcohol-based sanitizer, and you live on top of hundreds of people, meaning a virus like COVID-19 will spread like a prairie fire.
“COVID-19 will remind us of a central hypocrisy in our approach to health behind bars,” The Hill reported last week. “We’ve built the world’s largest collection of jails and prisons, and kept the health services in these places remarkably separate from the rest of our national health systems. The CDC, state departments of health, the Joint Commission and other bodies that promote evidence-based care in our hospitals, ambulatory care clinics and nursing homes are largely absent in these settings. As a result, management of this pandemic will be harder and less effective for incarcerated people, their families and staff in these institutions.”
“Time is of the essence to avert a public health catastrophe in the United States’ prisons and jails,” Nazgol Ghandnoosh, senior research analyst for The Sentencing Project told Newsweek on Tuesday. “Protecting incarcerated people during a contagious health
crisis by expediting releases would reduce the burden on prison staff of caring for the very ill and reduce demand for limited hospital resources which are shared with the broader public.”
Newsweek, Coronavirus Could Cause ‘Public Health Catastrophe’ in Overcrowded Jails Warns Prison Reform Group The Sentencing Project (Mar. 11)
New York Daily News, NYC’s federal jails not prepared for coronavirus, says defense attorney group (Mar. 9)
The Marshall Project: When Purell is Contraband, How Do You Contain It? (Mar. 6)
The Hill, 4 ways to protect our jails and prisons from coronavirus (Feb. 29)
– Thomas L. Root