Advocates and even prison guards are calling for reforms to head off a potential outbreak in the federal prison system, which has been plagued for years by violence, misconduct and staffing shortages.
But a supervisor ordered him to take it off and threatened disciplinary action if he refused. At other federal prisons, though, he would have been told to wear one. Rules on protective gear vary widely from prison to prison.
Health officials have been warning for more than a decade about the dangers of epidemics in jails and prisons, which are ideal environments for virus outbreaks: Inmates share small cells with strangers, use toilets just a few feet from their beds and are herded into day rooms where they spend hours at a time together.
“We want to make sure that our institutions don’t become petri dishes,” he said. “But we have the protocols that are designed to stop that, and we are using all the tools we have to protect the inmates.” There are approximately 146,000 inmates at the 122 federal correctional facilities across the U.S., including about 10,000 over the age of 60. New inmates coming into the federal prison system are screened for COVID-19 risk factors, have their temperature taken and are being quarantined for 14 days.
Joseph Plany, locked up at a federal prison camp in Beaumont, Texas, said one inmate sought treatment for respiratory symptoms and was turned away at the medical unit and sent back to his dorm. “There is no adequate possible plan, certainly not without greatly decreasing the population in these institutions,” said David Patton, executive director and chief attorney at the Federal Defenders of New York. “There is simply not enough space in there.”to the Bureau of Prisons on Thursday to increase the use of home confinement and identify non-violent, at-risk inmates who “might be safer serving their sentences in home confinement rather than in BOP facilities.
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