County jail inmates plead for more virus protections
For William Lynn, an inmate at the Allegheny County Jail, symptoms of the coronavirus came all at once. Headache, searing pain, sweating and the telltale sign that convinced him he had it: no taste or smell.
He was so sick, he said, that he had to crawl across the floor of his cell to retrieve the food a corrections officer had placed inside.
Despite his illness, Lynn said he was never given medication, such as ibuprofen, to relieve the pain, nor was he placed in isolation for
an extended period to keep him from spreading the infection.
Other inmates on Lynn’s Pod 8D, Justin Parrotte and Juan Hayden, have similar stories: As the virus spread in the unit in
February, they and other cellmates were left to plow through it on their own.
“Granted, we’re in jail, and some of us deserve to be here, but we’re being treated inhumanely,” said Lynn, who is awaiting a preliminary hearing on gun and assault charges. “We’re still human beings.”
Their concerns come as advocacy groups continue to wage a legal battle with the county over providing more protections for a jail where hundreds of inmates have come down with COVID-19.
Starting Monday, the jail will begin routine testing of inmates at its intake wing, a move prompted by a court order from the case and hailed as a breakthrough by advocates such as the Abolitionist Law Center and the Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project, which joined other groups in filing the case.
By getting the jail to consent to the screening, advocatessay, the county can more accurately track whether people booked into the facility are carrying the virus and take precautions to keep the diseasefrom spreading.
County spokeswoman Amie Downs sent an emailed response to Pittsburgh Post-Gazette questions about the issue, attributing the answers to the jail administrative team and assuring that the facility was responding to inmate needs.
“Over the past year, there are constant developments and new information as we learn more about the virus,” jail administrators said. “Our policies and practices are reviewed on an ongoing basis and adjustments are made as appropriate to procedures.”
For inmates and their advocates, however, the new testing in the intake area comes after a year of problems — hundreds of inmates and correctional officers have come down with the virus in a facility that’s likened to a massive congregate living center where the virus can thrive.
The advocates’ lawsuit was filed last April in an attempt to force the county to release all inmates over 55 years old and those with medical conditions that put them at heightened risk. The suit also sought to prod Warden Orlando Harper to impose mandatory mask
wearing for staff members and require social distancing for inmates at a time when the virus was about to explode nationwide.
“Conditions at the jail increase the likelihood that they will catch COVID-19,” the lawsuit warned.
Over the next year, at least 341 inmates were infected, county figures show, though advocates say they believe the number is much higher due to an unknown number of asymptomatic people who likely weren’t tested.
Lynn, Parrotte, 32, and Hayden, 56, all said they believe jail staff is unintentionally spreading the virus throughout the facility, making it more difficult for them to protect themselves.
They said nowhere was that felt more than in their maximum security Pod 8D, where they claim 39 of the unit’s 59 inmates came down with the disease between February and March — a number they say corrections officers shared with them.
“We never leave the block — how could we contract COVID any other way?” said Lynn, 35. “They’ve been telling us that it’s just an airborne virus; they’re blaming it on us. But we’re on the eighth floor; how could it just be from airborne spread from the street?”
Since the start of the pandemic, all jail inmates spend 23 hours a day confined to their cells, with the other hour set aside for recreation, said Parrotte, who was recently sentenced to life without parole on a homicide conviction.
Jail administrators contend that tracking the virus in the eight-floor facility is nearly impossible, because
it could be carried by any number of people, including inmates.
“As has been the case for months, there is community spread of the virus in the county, state, and country,” the county’s email said. “There is not a way to determine the source in most cases.”
Attempting to track infections over periods of time is difficult because the facility provides only the current cases for the day and the totals since the pandemic began.
But snapshots of the jail’s COVID-19 webpage on the Internet Archive show what appear to be outbreaks that inmates say have been occurring since the pandemic began. On Feb. 12, the facility showed 34 inmates with an infection out of 1,588, compared with just four the previous week.
Two weeks later, on Feb. 26, at least 69 were infected out of a jail population of 1,633.
Lynn’s belief of staff spreading the disease in the facility is shared by Alexandra Morgan-Kurtz, a managing attorney for the Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project.
“They are the ones who are constantly going in and out of the community,” Ms. Morgan-Kurtz said. “We’ve seen this fact reflected in outbreaks at facilities across the state over the past year.”
Staff regularly entering and leaving the building is a reality of jail operations, but Ms. Morgan-Kurtz said many employees aren’t taking precautions necessary to limit their exposure to inmates.
As of the beginning of this
month, 166 out of 675 eligible jail employees — 25% — had refused to be vaccinated, according to a report by Deputy Warden Laura Williams at a county Jail Oversight Board meeting April 1.
Jaclyn Kurin, an attorney for the Abolitionist Law Center, said frequent staff shortages often force employees to work double or triple shifts, with many bouncing between various pods throughout the building as one shift ends and the next begins.
Ms. Kurin said that as a result, an asymptomatic corrections officer could spread the virus across multiple levels of the facility without even knowing it.
Although Ms. Kurin and Ms. Morgan-Kurtz acknowledged that new arrivals at the jail could be carrying the virus, they said the testing that will begin Monday should shed more light on how future outbreaks occur.
An inmate testing positive at intake will be sent to a holding cell and isolated before being moved into the general population, the jail COVID-19 policy says.
“Now that we have intake testing, any outbreaks we see after April 12 will most likely be coming from staff members,” Ms. MorganKurtz said. “It’s really the only explanation at that point.”
Ms. Kurin said to better protect inmates from staff members who choose not to be vaccinated, her group has asked the warden to reassign those staff members to other areas in the jail.
Under the jail’s collective bargaining agreement, Warden Harper can move officers anywhere in the facility under special circumstances, but so far, he has refused to do so because of understaffing.
The lack of staff also is the cause of other jail practices that may contribute to the virus’s spread, Ms. Kurin said.
A number of pods are currently closed due to the lack of staffing, she said. Instead of partially opening these units to socially distance inmates throughout the building, along with potentially increasing the amount of inmate recreation time, Ms. Kurin said jail leadership is instead clumping inmates together in certain pods at full capacity.
Understaffing also is a consistent problem for the jail’s medical team. According to a report from the warden to the county’s Jail Oversight Board, the facility had 47 vacancies among health care workers as of March 22 — or 40% of its medical staff.
Roughly the same number of health care positions have remained unfilled since at least October, according to the report.
Ms. Kurin said the lack of health care workers could have contributed to Lynn and other inmates not getting the medication they needed when they were ill with COVID-19.
Countered jail officials: “Correctional health care — across the board — is an often challenging field that does not suit everyone. While there may be vacancies, health care is fully covered with contract staff and overtime as appropriate … any and all appropriate medications are provided based on medical advice.”
Ms. Kurin, though, said inmates not receiving proper medication is a frequent complaint. The Abolitionist Law Center and Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project sent a scathing letter to Warden Harper in late March concerning a 71-year-old inmate who had been abruptly denied methadone treatment for his opioid-use disorder, despite having been prescribed the medication since January2019.
When an inmate at the jail does contract COVID-19, implementation of where they are isolated or quarantined and for how long is murky, said Allegheny County Councilwoman Bethany Hallam, a member of the Jail Oversight Board and a critic of the facility.
The jail’s written policy, created as a result of the lawsuit, says inmates who test positive are supposed to be isolated for at least 10 days, and those who are exposed to someone with the disease are to be quarantined for 14 days.
Lynn said he spent just two days in isolation after he tested positive and the virus raced through his unit. He said his cell was barely cleaned while he was gone — a mandatory safeguard under the jail policy.
Juan Hayden, an inmate in the same unit who is awaiting trial on homicide charges, confirmed Lynn’s statement in a separate interview, saying other inmates in the pod were isolated on a lower floor for only a few days after testing positive, before being brought back upstairs.
Jail officials insisted that they follow all guidance by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the state Health and Corrections departments, and the Allegheny County Health Department for proper quarantine and isolation periods and cleaning.
“A movement [of inmates from pod to pod] does not indicate that [quarantine or isolation] has ended,” the officials said.
Ms. Hallam said that for months she demanded to see the jail’s written guidelines but never received them from the warden’s office. Finally, she said, one of the advocacy groupsgave her a copy.
“Fighting every step of the way for protections for one of our most vulnerable populations is just disgusting to me. This is not how it should be, should not be how jail works, and should not be how the county works,” Ms. Hallam said. “Everything has just been so secretive. If you’re doing things right and following CDC guidelines as you’ve claimed, why do you have anything to hide?”
Lynn said the jail needs to be held accountable not just for him but for his fellow inmates and future arrivals.
“I’ve already been through it, so I’m not doing this for me. I’m doing this for the next man,” Lynn said. “We’re just trying to get our living environment a little bit better than it is right now ... a lot of guys were suffering when COVID was spreading around that time. Some guys are still suffering.”