SAN QUENTIN – California prison officials last year created a “public health disaster” in San Quentin and Corcoran prisons by transferring inmates from other prisons through a poorly planned and hasty trial, while COVID-19 rates were rising. the state, according to a miserable report from a state oversight agency.
The 69-page report, released Monday by the Office of the Inspector General, found that transfers to San Quentin from the California Institution for Men in Chino in the spring and summer of 2020 “were deeply flawed and endangered the health and lives of thousands of people and staff.” imprisoned. “The report found that staff relied on outdated or inadequate tests, that officials were pressured to speed up transfers, and that staff who expressed concern were largely ignored.
A leader at Chino Prison has “explicitly ordered that detainees not be retested the day before transfers begin,” the report said. The problems were so obvious that at least two California inmates showed obvious symptoms of the coronavirus when they got off the bus from Chino to San Quentin.
Twenty-eight people died of COVID-19 in San Quentin, and more than 2,000 cases – about two-thirds of the prison population at the time – contracted the virus, according to data released by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
“Our analysis also found that when staff became aware of the positive results of the tests shortly after the incarceration, both prisons failed to properly conduct follow-up investigations,” the inspector general wrote. Roy Wesley in the letter of intent of the report. “According to San Quentin, there have been too many positive cases in a short period of time to track contacts.”
Wesley’s letter notes that since the transfer disaster, the prison system “has taken several actions to better protect inmates who transfer between prisons, including the implementation of procedures that require prisons to conduct COVID-19 tests for the transfer of inmates to the prison. much more than five days before the transfer, followed by a quick test on the day of the scheduled transfer. Wesley noted, however, that his office has not yet reviewed these new implementations.
Asked for a comment on the findings, a CDCR spokeswoman issued a jointly prepared written statement from her department and California Correctional Health Care Services.
“We appreciate this report from the OIG and note that there were many factors that contributed to the need to move people at high medical risk from CIM in May, which are not reflected in the report,” the statement said. “The transfers were made with the intention of mitigating the potential harm to patients with CIM from COVID-19 and were based on a careful risk analysis using scientific information available in May 2020 regarding the transmission of this new disease. We acknowledged that some mistakes were made in the process of these transfers and both CCHCS and CDCR made appropriate changes in the patient’s movement since then. ”
The outbreak has become the subject of an investigation by the state Senate, as well as several lawsuits. It is also a stalemate for supporters of the release, who held a weekend rally – a caravan over the Bay Bridge – urging Governor Gavin Newsom to follow the advice of health officials to authorize thousands of releases from the prison system. state.
The Inspector General’s report is part III of the long-term review by the Agency, and the findings so far have not been wonderful. A report published in October found that, although PPE was widely available in the prison system, inspectors noted that “staff and inmates often did not follow these basic security protocols”. An August report found that vague screening directives “appear to have caused inconsistent implementation in prisons”.
While COVID-19 rates in San Quentin have dropped dramatically since mid-2020, there are still more than 2,200 active cases in the state prison system. Nearly 200 inmates died, according to CDCR data.
Monday’s report suggests that many in the CDCR and CCHCS saw the disaster coming. An e-mail from a “CCHCS nurse” sent on May 27 – the day before the transfers began – notes that the detainees were tested three weeks earlier, “too many days ago” to make the transfers safely in prison, even though the prisoners were quarantined on arrival at the new prison. Another e-mail from the California Institution for Men Manager said that “it’s hard to do things right when there’s a rush … I’m surprised the headquarters wants to move our detainees right now.”
Of those transferred, 189 were medically vulnerable and therefore have a higher risk of death if they contracted the virus, according to the report. Just a day before the first bus left Chino, officials were still debating key details, such as how many people would board each bus and where to accommodate them upon their arrival in Corcoran and San Quentin. When the detainees arrived, their property was so disorganized that it was impossible for staff to tell who they belonged to.
“Not only did the prison fail to recently test the incarcerated people being transferred to ensure that they were not infected with COVID-19 at the time of the transfers, but the medical staff performed verbal and temperature checks too early for several incarcerated persons. scheduled to transfer in order to effectively determine if they had symptoms of COVID-19 when boarding buses to Corcoran and San Quentin, ”the report said.