Jail can protect its prisoners from COVID-19
An underappreciated issue in our community is the dispute over COVID-19 conditions at the Shelby County Jail, where a federal court recently said that the jail's population was “in deep peril” from COVID-19.
There are clear signs that instead of responding to the issues identified by the court, the jail is doing the minimum legally required, and sometimes less than that. Meanwhile, the jail remains a breeding ground for COVID-19, which has already killed three deputies and sickened hundreds of detained people. Our sheriff can and should do better.
Last year, pretrial detainees who were medically vulnerable to COVID-19 sued the jail, claiming that social distancing was impossible at 201 Poplar, and that COVID was rampant. With both staff and detainees regularly cycling through the building, these conditions threatened the health of the entire community.
This spring, the parties agreed to a consent decree, which the court approved. The decree calls for a court-appointed independent monitor to inspect the jail and make recommendations on COVID-19 testing, quarantine, vaccinations, and other related matters. Hopes were high the jail had turned a corner.
That hope was quickly dashed
Judge Sheryl Lipman recently issued a painstaking, 24-page order detailing the many ways the jail has failed to live up to the consent decree's promise, and in some cases has not even done what it claimed to be doing.
The independent monitor, whom the Sheriff himself nominated, reported that the vaccination program there is “completely ineffective.”
The vaccination rate at Shelby County Jail is below 25%, a level that another expert called “shockingly low,” much lower than that of jails and prisons across the country. Indeed, just down the road at the County Correction Center, the vaccination rate is above 70%.
Reports paint a picture of both neglect and sometimes outright opposition to doing the right thing. The jail has failed to follow CDC guidance for jails and prisons.
The jail has declined an offer to have County Corrections officials go into the jail to help with vaccination. The jail refuses to track its vaccination rate, testifying that they don't consider it important.
We need to treat jail detainees, who have not been convicted of any crime, with the dignity and respect every human being deserves.
While Sheriff Floyd Bonner ran for office as a Democrat, it's hard to tell how the sheriff's behavior in this matter would be different from a run-of-the-mill Republican sheriff. This is regrettably of a piece with Sheriff Bonner's position on federal oversight of Juvenile Court, and efforts to reform police presence in public schools.
You might expect that damning reports from an independent inspector and a clear directive from a federal judge would inspire the jail to action. But instead, it moved to terminate the consent decree while the COVID-19 situation was still dire.
When the court ordered that the decree remain in place, the jail appealed and asked that the decree be suspended.
Generally, the sheriff should spend his energy on complying with the consent decree he agreed to. The focus should be on safety, not winning lawsuits.
Fisher is pastor at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Memphis. Orrin is executive director of Stand For Children.