THE PROMISE OF JUSTICE INITIATIVE TABLE OF CONTENTS: ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 2 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 3 INTRODUCTION 5 PART I: A SERIES OF CRISES AT EVERY LEVEL OF INCARCERATION 7 THE BEGINNING OF THE VIRAL SPREAD 7 FEDERAL FACILITIES 9 OAKDALE F EDERAL C ORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION 9 IMMIGRATION DETENTION CENTERS THROUGHOUT LOUISIANA 13 STATE RUN FACILITIES 14 LOUISIANA STATE PENITENTIARY 17 LOUISIANA C ORRECTIONAL INSTITUTE FOR WOMEN 24 OFFICE OF JUVENILE JUSTICE F ACILITIES 26 LOCAL FACILITIES 30 ORLEANS PARISH PRISON 30 EAST BATON ROUGE PARISH PRISON 32 PART II: INADEQUATE AND HARMFUL GOVERNMENT RESPONSES 35 INITIAL STATEWIDE RESPONSE 35 CAMP J 35 REVIEW PANEL 37 HEALTH E QUITY TASK F ORCE 39 MISINFORMATION AND A LACK OF TRANSPARENCY 41 DEPLORABLE CONDITIONS OF CONFINEMENT 43 SOLITARY C ONFINEMENT AND LOCKDOWNS 44 NO OR INADEQUATE MEDICAL CARE 44 F ORCED LABOR IN DANGEROUS C ONDITIONS 46 FAILURE TO USE RELEASE MECHANISMS 47 FAILURE TO CONDUCT MASS TESTING 49 PART III: RECOMMENDATIONS 51 CONCLUSION 53 APPENDIX A: DEVELOPMENTS IN ADDITIONAL STATE FACILITIES 54 APPENDIX B: DEVELOPMENTS IN ADDITIONAL LOCAL FACILITIES 56 ENDNOTES 58 PJI | LOCKED IN WITH COVID-19 THE PROMISE OF JUSTICE INITIATIVE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Throughout the COVID-19 Staff Contributors: pandemic, people locked in Mercedes Montagnes ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSprisons, jails, and detention Jamila Johnson centers across the state of Rebecca Ramaswamy Louisiana have been fighting for Nishi Kumar their lives. They and their loved Eddie Keith ones on the outside have Michael Cahoon displayed a level of strength, Katie Hunter-Lowrey endurance, and advocacy that is Ben Cohen unmatched. Since the early days Amber Thorpe of the pandemic in March 2020, Zoe Reier incarcerated people and their ...and all the staff at PJI and loved ones across the state CAP for sharing our clients’ have reached out to our office stories to tell their stories about how COVID-19 began to creep into Intern Contributors: their living spaces and upend Maya Chaudhuri their daily lives. Unlike those of Jacqui Oesterblad us on the outside, who are able Meredith Booker to make choices to social Eliora Mintz distance, control our Samantha Olivero surroundings, and maintain cleaning and sanitizing Partner Contributors: practices, those inside are Professor Andrea unable to engage in these basic Armstrong safety measures to keep Reverend Alexis Anderson themselves healthy. Dr. Anjali Niyogi This report is dedicated to all the incarcerated people who became infected with COVID-19 and the family members of those who lost their lives to COVID-19 while incarcerated. PJI | LOCKED IN WITH COVID-19 3 THE PROMISE OF JUSTICE INITIATIVE 1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Since the COVID-19 pandemic began sweeping across the United States in February 2020, STATE FACILITIES most Americans have changed Louisiana Department of Health their lives, habits, and the way • Guidance calling for depopulation they interact with others in mysteriously rescinded order to keep themselves and • Website reporting statewide numbers others safe. These behavioral does not include people in prisons shifts have been impossible in Camp J Plan carceral facilities. Administrators • State implemented plan to transfer all of prisons, jails, and detention COVID-19 patients to a previously centers across the country have shuttered, decrepit disciplinary unit at struggled to effectively respond Louisiana State Penitentiary—over an to the spread of COVID-19. In hour from the nearest reference hospital Louisiana, officials at federal, state, and local facilities have Lack of Testing responded poorly to the • DOC received 24,000 test kits between pandemic by failing to June and September and has only implement mass testing and administered just over 7,000 tests to preventative measures, incarcerated persons as of early December quarantining people in areas of (DOC has over 31,000 people within its prisons that had been immediate custody) previously closed due to Children decaying conditions, and failing • Office of Juvenile Justice cancelled all to provide adequate medical visitation and programming and limited care to those experiencing family contact to a few free phone calls a COVID-19 symptoms. This report week. Families had to pay for additional details how COVID-19 calls progressed through correctional • Children were pepper sprayed, placed in institutions across the state and solitary confinement, and locked in their how government officials have dorms for up to 23 hours per day failed to properly respond to the pandemic. Review Panel for Furlough • Only 1,200 people, 4% of DOC population, Louisiana’s Oakdale Federal eligible for panel review for furlough Correctional Institution was one under narrow criteria of the first carceral facilities in • Panel disbanded in June with only 72 the country to reach crisis level individuals having been released—0.2% of once the pandemic began and DOC population was the site of the first PJI | LOCKED IN WITH COVID-19 4 THE PROMISE OF JUSTICE INITIATIVE 1 confirmed COVID-19 death in a and transparency has obscured federal prison. At an ICE the rampant spread of the virus Processing Center, 79 women as well as its death toll. who asked for soap were instead trapped in a room and Part I of this report provides a pepper-sprayed. Weeks after timeline of COVID-19’s the pandemic hit Louisiana, the progression through Louisiana Department of Health correctional facilities throughout (LDH) issued its first guidance Louisiana. This section contains regarding prisons, which called first-hand accounts from those for depopulation, among other incarcerated and their loved actions—but this guidance was ones, combined with data mysteriously rescinded within obtained from government hours. As of early December, officials through Louisiana Louisiana Department of Public Public Records Law requests. Safety and Corrections (DOC) Part II discusses how the was reporting 2,586 confirmed government ¾including the COVID-19 cases and 31 deaths Governor, the Louisiana in the state prisons. At local jails Department of Health, and the and prisons, lack of reporting Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections¾ provided an inadequate and FEDERAL FACILITIES harmful response to the Oakdale Federal Correctional pandemic, including by Institution disseminating misinformation, • “Ground zero” of federal prison system holding people in deplorable • Site of first confirmed COVID-19 death conditions of confinement, and in federal prison failing to use release • Justice Department found that Oakdale mechanisms and to conduct “failed to comply with federal health mass testing. Part III provides guidance” recommendations to Immigration Detention Centers • 79 women asked for soap and were pepper sprayed LOCAL FACILITIES • 83 people pepper sprayed and left in Inconsistency room full of pepper spray after • Sheriffs’ responses varied dramatically requesting to be released or deported Lack of Transparency to escape threat of COVID-19 • Only 6 out of 64 parishes responded to • Employees initially forbidden from a data request from the State’s Health wearing masks Equity Task Force PJI | LOCKED IN WITH COVID-19 5 THE PROMISE OF JUSTICE INITIATIVE 1 government officials for PJI on March 21 to express his controlling the continued fears about the virus and its spread of COVID-19 and spread: adequately responding to future public health crises. “My condition is getting worser by the day, I only have four years remaining until my release, but I INTRODUCTION am afraid I may die here As COVID-19 began to spread because they have guards here throughout the United States in who have taken sick on the job February and March 2020, with corona symptoms and were incarcerated people across the taken out of here in ambulances. country, along with their I believe the virus is already here! advocates and loved ones, Several inmates have become began to raise the alarm that gravely ill, but DOC is not telling the media about this.” the virus could soon overtake correctional facilities nationwide. That worry was Across the country, there has well-founded. Prisons and jails been a collective failure to take foster conditions for viral steps to reduce the impact of spread. Namely, social COVID-19 on jail and prison distancing is impossible in these populations. The response in facilities, health care— Louisiana is no different. While particularly emergency care—is the government has a generally inadequate, and responsibility to keep everyone incarcerated people are more in the state safe, it has a special likely to have underlying duty to care for people in its illnesses and co-morbidities, custody. Detaining people which make them more likely to during normal times, as well as develop severe symptoms if during a global pandemic, they contract COVID-19 and requires state and prison require medical intervention.1 A officials to protect incarcerated recent study found that people people from cruel and unusual in jail and prisons are five and a punishment and to prevent half times more likely to be substantial risk of serious harm. infected with COVID-19 and The duty arises from the three times more likely to die immense restrictions that from the virus than the general incarceration imposes on population.2 One man people; while free people can incarcerated in Angola wrote to make decisions about whether to expose themselves to risks PJI | LOCKED IN WITH COVID-19 6 THE PROMISE OF JUSTICE INITIATIVE 1 and take steps to protect confluence of incarceration and themselves and affirmatively poor