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This article was written by Alice Speri and Akela Lacy and originally published by The Intercept.
This article was written by Alice Speri and Akela Lacy and originally published by The Intercept.
As the Coronavirus rips through jails and prisons across the country and pressure
mounts on corrections departments to stave off disaster, federal, state, and
local officials have begun to release some incarcerated people in an effort to
reduce prison density and slow the spread of the virus. But in Louisiana, which
has both the highest incarceration rate in the country and one of the worst
virus outbreaks, officials are bucking the trend. Rather than release people,
they plan to isolate those who test positive for the virus in two
maximum-security state facilities — a plan that critics said amounts to
creating death camps.
“The
DOC plan to transfer people from across the state to Camp J — where there is no
medical care, no hospitals, no access to lawyers — will be the moral stain on
our country,” said Ben Cohen, of counsel at the Promise of Justice Initiative.
He’s been doing capital defense and civil rights work in New Orleans for 23
years, including several cases following Hurricane Katrina. “It is like the
Japanese internment camps, but with body bags. We are literally watching the
S.S. St. Louis being sent back to Germany.”
Under
the plan, local jails and state prisons without the equipment necessary to
treat Covid-19 patients can send them to one of two facilities: the Louisiana
State Penitentiary, commonly known as Angola after the plantation that once
operated there, or the Allen Correctional Center. The plan, which also applies
to people held in pretrial detention, was met with a barrage of questions and
criticism. Last week, the Promise of Justice Initiative and the American Civil
Liberties Union of Louisiana filed a motion for a temporary restraining order
to prevent state officials from transferring Covid-19 patients to Angola. On
Thursday, a federal judge denied the request. A federal judge in February
declared parts of the prison’s medical care system unconstitutional, and is set
to rule in the coming days in an ongoing class-action suit filed in 2015 by
people incarcerated at the facility against the Louisiana Department of Public
Safety and Corrections.
“If
you were lacking to start with, this crisis won’t make it easier, it will make
it more challenging,” said Norris Henderson, who spent 27 years wrongfully
incarcerated at Angola and now runs Voice of the Experienced, or VOTE, a New
Orleans-based group of formerly incarcerated activists. “There is no way in any
prison environment to have the social distancing that folks are calling for,
and this is why there’s this national call across the country to start moving
people out of these types of environments.”
Louisiana
released data on Monday showing that black people account for 70 percent of all
the state’s coronavirus deaths. Black people make up 32 percent of the state’s
population, while 66 percent of people incarcerated in the state are black.
On
March 28, Louisiana became the first state to record the death of an
incarcerated person from Covid-19. Patrick Jones, who was 49 and serving a
27-year sentence for a nonviolent drug offense, died at FCI Oakdale, a federal
prison that has since recorded four more Covid-19-related deaths.
There
are more than 50,000 people incarcerated across about 100 detention facilities
in Louisiana. But attorneys and advocates have struggled to get information
from corrections officials and fear the number of positive cases is far higher
than reported. The outbreak at Oakdale, they say, should serve as a warning of
what’s likely coming to Louisiana state prisons and local jails.
To
date, Louisiana has 14,867 positive coronavirus cases, one of 13 states with
more than 5,000 reported cases.
At
least 28 people incarcerated in state facilities across Louisiana and 22
corrections staff have tested positive for the virus. According to local news
reports, Department officials said they identified “several hundred” beds for
possible coronavirus patients between Angola and Allen. But advocates say
that’s not enough, as they expect cases among people in prisons to continue
growing rapidly. A department spokesperson did not respond to repeated requests
for comment.
The
bulk of people transferred from jails will be pretrial detainees, meaning they
have not yet been convicted of a crime, said Rev. Alexis Anderson, a member of
the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison Reform Coalition. “The minute they are
moved, [they] will lose most of their constitutional rights.” She said the
state has the capacity to move people to medical facilities and that it was
concerning that no medical experts had been consulted on the plan, which was
designed by the Sheriffs’ Association and submitted to the Department of
Corrections. The Louisiana Department of Health did not respond to a request
for comment.
“There’s
no reason to believe that the experience of Oakdale is going to be any
different than Rayburn or any other prison,” said Bruce Reilly, deputy director
of VOTE, referring to the state facility with the most reported cases so far.
“We know that the governor isn’t just trying to let everybody die. But what we
do want is transparency. And we want to see public health officials overseeing
this crisis.”
The
situation at Rayburn Correctional Center, a men’s prison in the southeastern
part of the state, has raised particular concern after 17 men held there were
confirmed to have contracted the virus. In emails to his attorney, Christopher
Marlowe, a diabetic man incarcerated at Rayburn who has filed a petition for
emergency release, described a frightening situation. Marlowe wrote that at
least two dorms — and more than 300 people — had been put in quarantine after
people started reporting symptoms, but noted that some people had since been
shuffled to different dorms.
“We
don’t have free access to bleach or cleaning agents. We don’t have anything to
wipe the phones with, no alcohol pads or anything,” he wrote last week. “There
are no paper towels to dry hands. They issue us one bar of soap every two weeks
to bathe and wash hands with. We live 20-30” apart in our beds.”
“We
eat at tables, 4 to a table, in a cafeteria that has now proven to have had
covid-positive people working until 3 days ago, but the others that worked with
him are still there.”
“I
just hope I don’t get it,” Marlowe added in a subsequent email. “Cell blocks
are virtual death sentences for diabetics.”
So
far, only a handful of people who have tested positive for the virus have been
transferred to Angola, according to advocates monitoring the state response to
the crisis. After an uproar when the proposal to isolate sick people there was
first announced, officials backtracked and called the proposal a “contingency
plan.”
There
are at least two known cases of people who tested positive for Covid-19 and
were transferred to hospitals, and are now under consideration for transfer to
either Angola or Allen.
Last
week, a group of advocates met with Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards and other
state officials to seek clarifications about their plans to handle a surge of
cases in the state’s prisons. Henderson, of VOTE, said that advocates continued
to plead with officials to release those most at risk, but also demanded
guarantees that no incarcerated people would work in prison units dedicated to
Covid-19 patients.
“They
said that no incarcerated folks would be working in or around that particular
unit, that the unit would be staffed by nurses and folks from probation and
parole and that they will have PPE,” said Henderson, referring to personal
protective equipment. “We are pressing to have these folks released. But in the
interim, this is one of the things that’s happening, they’re trying to triage.”
So
far, seven staff members and five inmates have tested positive for Covid-19 at
Angola. Critics have warned that sending sick people to the prison, which
already has an aging population and houses many with preexisting conditions,
could be disastrous. Some have asked why a facility that’s historically housed
an elderly and chronically ill population doesn’t have an emergency plan for
contagious diseases. “This was already a dangerously ill population,” said
Anderson, of the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison Reform Coalition, adding that
many people at Angola are poor or have challenges with substance abuse or
mental illness.
Angola,
the largest maximum-security prison in the country, is infamous for its poor conditions,
including medical neglect. The facility also houses the state execution chamber
and men’s death row. In their 2015 class-action lawsuit, individuals
incarcerated at the prison accused officials of neglecting their medical needs,
as well as violating the rights of individuals with disabilities. To date, the
state has done little to reassure the public that Angola’s chronic problems
would be fixed on time for the prison to host Covid-19 patients. “One of the
most frightening pieces of this is, of course, Angola is currently in
litigation for its subpar health care,” said Anderson.
In
the new motion seeking to stop the state from transferring sick inmates to
Angola, plaintiffs argued that the state was “about to embark on a course of
action that will likely result in the death of dozens if not hundreds of Class
members.” The filers cited a supplemental declaration from an expert in medical
care at correctional facilities, Dr. Michael Puisis, who said Angola has “no
place to treat an ill person with Covid-19 except in a general housing unit or
on the infirmary, both of which would expose other patients to infection.” Even
if people could be somehow isolated and treated simultaneously, the filers
wrote, “inappropriate policy on staff who may have contracted Covid-19” would
make transmissions between staff and the general population at Angola
“inevitable.”
The
plan to move people to Angola was haphazard and poorly thought through, without
consultation from the state’s department of health or medical experts, critics
noted. “It’s only one thing to say, we’re going to separate the sick from the
not sick,” said Reilly, of VOTE. “What’s your protocol for the guards? Are you
separating them? Are you quarantining the guards? It’s not a contained unit if
there are people going in and out of there. If that’s part of your plan, let us
know.”
“This
is not a medical facility. This is a dungeon that has had some beds and a mop
thrown into it.”
Under
the state’s plan, people sent to Angola will be housed in Camp J, a unit which
was shut down in 2018 after operating for more than 40 years because of
inhumane treatment of prisoners, crumbling infrastructure, and poor
ventilation. At its peak, the unit housed 400 people in solitary cells.
“This
is not a medical facility,” Anderson said. “This is a dungeon that has had some
beds and a mop thrown into it.”
“It
was shut down because it was horrific,” Cohen said. “When I would visit my
clients in Camp J, they would beg to get released because the conditions were
so terrible.”
“It’s
basically not suitable for living,” said Reilly. “People think of Camp J and
they think negatively. They basically think, you’re going to send me there to
die.”
So
far, state officials have done little to assuage those fears.
“Anyone
who tells you that there’s a plan to care for people at Camp J is
misrepresenting both the history of Camp J and the circumstances. I don’t know
whether they’re lying to themselves or lying to you,” Cohen said, noting his
organization’s ongoing lawsuit over medical care at the facility predating the
spread of coronavirus. “The Department of Corrections has essentially had a
policy of reducing incarceration by allowing people to die for years at
Angola,” he said.
“There
are no ventilators at all in Angola, nor will there ever be. And there’s no
ventilators in West Louisiana Parish,” Anderson said. “We will literally be moving
people from places where there is competent health care, adequate space
available for isolating people within the community.”
In
addition to the pending class-action suit, the state Supreme Court is expected
any day to deliver an opinion in another case with potential implications for
thousands of people housed at Angola, Cohen said. He is counsel for Ramos v.
Louisiana, which deals with the question of whether a unanimous jury should be
required for conviction at the state level, as it is in federal cases. If the
court rules in favor of Ramos, it would immediately apply directly to 100
people, Cohen said, noting the possibilities for application to people at
Angola.
“What’s terrifying for me is that they’re gonna die before we have a
chance to vindicate their claims.”
UPDATE:
April 7, 2020
After
publication, Department of Corrections spokesperson Ken Pastorick called The
Intercept and sent a statement responding to previous questions. Pastorick
confirmed that Angola has no ventilators and is relying on existing plans to
transfer people to local hospitals who need medical care beyond what
corrections staff can provide. Asked if those medical facilities have
ventilators, Pastorick said he did not know.
“Camp
J is intended only to serve as an isolation facility for offenders who have
tested positive but are not displaying serious symptoms and who are not in
medical distress,” Pastorick said in a statement. “Severe cases will not be
housed at Camp J. If an offender housed at Camp J begins to exhibit severe
symptoms, he will be transported to an outside hospital.”
Pastorick
declined to comment on comments from advocates that the plan could create death
camps. Asked about the ability of corrections staff to provide medical care,
and the availability of medical equipment, Pastorick said, “We have top notch
staff.” He emphasized that staff and people housed at Camp J will not come into
contact with anyone else at Angola.
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