As COVID Raged, It Took Weeks for Inmates in One Prison to See a Doctor

Everyone knew a humanitarian crisis was coming, but no one did anything about it. The inmates in our overcrowded prisons were like sitting ducks when the coronavirus pandemic took hold in early 2020. Trapped in close confines, they could do little if anything to avoid the spread of the pathogen once it got into facilities.

With a pandemic surging around the world, you would think that our nation’s corrections facilities would throw themselves into high alert, and work to mitigate risk and beef up health resources. But that’s not quite what happened. In many facilities, it was business as usual as the virus rapidly spread from inmate to inmate within prison walls. In one federal prison, it was a struggle for inmates even to see a doctor.

The Metropolitan Detention Center, a federal jail located in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, is no stranger to allegations of bad health care practices. Just last month, a former inmate, Carolyn Richards, won a $2 billion settlement with the U.S. Bureau of Prisons after medical staff at the MDC failed to timely address a condition, ultimately resulting in her losing most of her sight in both of her eyes. Instead of helping her, medical staff at the prison mocked and blamed Richards for her worsening condition, which was likely caused by a cosmetic procedure she had before going to jail.

Today, the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Inspector General released a scathing report finding that inmates at the MDC who reported coronavirus symptoms waited as long as three months to see a doctor and receive testing or treatment. All the while, inmates who were positive were likely spreading COVID throughout the facility without anything to stop the damage.

At the time of the investigation, in May, the institution reported that only six inmates were testing positive for the virus. However, it appears likely the disease was far more widespread at the time in the 1,400-person facility.

Problems appeared to stem from the prison’s dire staffing shortage. From March through September, just one doctor was available for the facility. Normally the jail has a total of three. The total number of medical personnel at the facility was only 22, including temporary workers. The normal count is 30.

For months at a time, hundreds of medical requests from inmates went unaddressed. As of May 1, at least 125 “sick call” requests from inmates, including those claiming to have coronavirus symptoms, still had no response as of May 1.

Sadly, there was not much, if any, response from the government to this crisis. A lawsuit was filed on behalf of prisoners over the situation. In June, a federal judge rejected their request to order officials to improve efforts to contain the virus or otherwise order the release of hundreds of prisoners.

U.S. District Judge Rachel Kovner ruled that inmates at the MDC failed to show the jail personnel displayed “deliberate indifference to a substantial risk of harm,” a standard that has been established by the U.S. Supreme Court for findings of cruel and unusual punishment. The judge characterized the prison’s response as “aggressive” with “no preexisting playbook.”

Unfortunately, the judge’s response shows how hard it is to correct injustices in the system on a large scale and the unwillingness to upset the status quo, even in the face of a deadly pandemic. But all hope is not lost. On a case-by-case basis, judges have increasingly been granting compassionate release motions to inmates who demonstrate that they are at risk of developing severe COVID-19.

Although it may not be obvious, many judges are aware of the problems with healthcare in the MDC and other prisons. That factor comes into play when deciding whether an individual prisoner should be in a safer environment with his or her family.