Delays in releasing inmates from prison alleged by lawyers

Lawyers representing Danbury federal prison inmates are claiming there have been delays in identifying medically fragile people for release during the COVID-19 pandemic, adding that a settlement with federal authorities over the issue is not being enforced.

The claims come less than a week after a judge ordered 17 of the Danbury prison inmates be released over COVID-19 concerns.

Conditions at the prison have deteriorated so much that inmates who test positive for COVID-19 are receiving no medical care, only sporadic temperature checks, and one 65-year-old woman was left to lie in her own vomit without a bed or a way to contact staff, according to papers filed in federal court by a team of attorneys representing inmates.

The woman wound up spending several days in the hospital after initially being denied medical care while she was exhibiting symptoms of COVID-19, said attorney Alexandra Harrington, with the Criminal Justice Advocacy Clinic at the University at Buffalo School of Law.

“It was several hours before she was given help,” Harrington said. “When she returned from the hospital she was placed in a locked room alone for days with no change of clothes and no medical help.”

Harrington and a team of attorneys from clinics at Yale Law School and the Quinnipiac University School of Law are representing inmates at the Danbury prison in a lawsuit filed to require the federal Bureau of Prisons to identify medically fragile people for release during the pandemic.

The Danbury prison is following all federal guidelines for managing COVID-19, according to Emery Nelson with the Office of Public Affairs within the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

“All inmates at FCI Danbury have daily access to medical care and medical staff,” Nelson said in an email. “Inmates who test positive for COVID-19 are evaluated daily by medical staff, and receive temperature checks and symptoms screenings. All inmates are treated in accordance with CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) guidelines.”

Both sides reached a settlement agreement in October outlining steps to identify and release as many medically fragile inmates as possible. But since then Harrington and the legal team have had to repeatedly file motions and complaints that the prison wasn’t following the agreement.

A federal judge sided with the inmates on Dec. 12 ordering the release of 17 people who had been held in some cases for months even though they had been approved for furlough or home confinement.

The legal team filed a motion on Dec. 17 again calling the federal BOP out for consistently placing roadblocks to identifying those with conditions that would make them more vulnerable to complications or death from COVID-19.

A judge will hear the motion on Friday.