Prisons’ social distancing plan draws inmate advocates’ scorn
As California prisons reported 194 coronavirus cases among inmates and 132 among staff Wednesday, prison officials said they are implementing a plan to house inmates held in dormitories in groups of eight, each separated from the nearest group by at least 6 feet.
State officials told a federal judge in Oakland that the plan, approved by the courtappointed monitor of prison health care in California, is the best available approach toward social distancing in a prison setting and would help protect inmates and prison employees from COVID19. They also announced a plan to house newly paroled inmates in hotels if they have nowhere else to live.
But inmate advocates said prisoners would be separated only in their bunks and would still be sharing benches, tables at mealtimes, sinks, toilets and showers, and standing together in lines awaiting medication. For prisoners held in cells, advocates said some with symptoms of the disease have been placed in cells with healthy inmates, at least one of whom later tested positive for the coronavirus.
“People in these dorms are isolated when they are sleeping
and mix with others who are potentially contagious when they’re awake,” said Donald Specter, executive director of the nonprofit Prison Law Office. “This doesn’t make any sense and is contrary to established public health principles.”
Specter’s organization has asked federal courts to order early releases of substantial numbers of inmates during the pandemic, warning that crowded prisons are likely settings for outbreaks of the coronavirus and that more than 2,100 cases had been reported in a single state prison in Marion, Ohio.
California has released 3,500 inmates who had 60 days or less to serve on their sentences, and Gov. Gavin Newsom has halted transfers of inmates from county jails to state prisons, lowering the prison population by an additional 3,000 per month. Federal courts have declined to order additional releases so far. California prisons have about 110,000 inmates, a courtordered reduction of more than 20,000 from their level a decade ago but still about 30% above their designed capacity.
Of the 194 cases reported by the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, nearly all were in two prisons in Southern California: 99 in the California Institution for Men in Chino (San Bernardino County), and 87 at the California State Prison, Los Angeles County, an institution for male inmates located in Lancaster. An inmate who had been held at the prison in Chino died in a hospital April 19, the only reported death in the prison system.