COVID-19 outbreak hits Kentucky prison for women. Inmates file lawsuit to get out.
A fast-spreading COVID-19 outbreak at Kentucky’s prison for women in Shelby County is endangering lives because state corrections officials have responded slowly and incompetently, a new lawsuit alleges.
At least 11 inmates and three employees at the Kentucky Correctional Institution for Women have been infected with the novel coronavirus, according to a state Corrections Department website. The 733-bed prison houses 639 inmates.
The ACLU of Kentucky is asking a federal district judge in Louisville to order the release of medically vulnerable inmates held at the women’s prison. The ACLU’s suit, filed Monday, represents seven such inmates who say they fear for their safety because of the novel coronavirus.
“With an outbreak now underway at KCIW, petitioners’ serious medical conditions and exceptional vulnerability to COVID-19 puts them in grave, imminent and potentially mortal danger,” wrote ACLU attorney Heather Gatnarek.
“In the face of this substantial risk of serious harm, petitioners’ lives may very well depend upon their ability to practice social distancing. Maintaining the recommended isolation and distance from others is impossible at KCIW, however, and no set of conditions or circumstances short of significant population reductions will change this,” Gatnarek wrote.
At his Monday news conference, Gov. Andy Beshear told reporters he had not read the lawsuit, but he does not plan to release additional state inmates beyond the 1,236 freed by his executive orders earlier in the pandemic.
The secretary of Beshear’s executive cabinet, J. Michael Brown, said none of the women’s prison inmates have been hospitalized. The prison started mass testing on Friday, with more than 300 tests conducted so far, Brown said. The state hopes that once all COVID-positive inmates and employees are identified, proper steps can be taken to keep them apart from the general population, he said.
An earlier COVID-19 outbreak at a different state prison, the Green River Correctional Complex in Muhlenberg County, killed three inmates because corrections officials did not respond quickly enough to the threat, Gatnarek wrote in the ACLU’s lawsuit.
At Green River, corrections officials initially refused to use mass testing to determine how far the coronavirus had spread among inmates and staff, and they allowed infected inmates to pass the virus through mixed housing units, Gatnarek wrote. By the time the prison belatedly began mass testing and housing segregation, it faced a crisis.
In all, 366 inmates and 51 staff tested positive for COVID-19 at Green River. All but 20 inmates and three staff have now recovered.
Similarly, Gatnarek wrote, the women’s prison has not taken the COVID-19 threat seriously. Masks are not properly worn by many corrections officers and inmates, cleaning is inadequate and social distancing is not conducted in housing units and common areas such as dining halls. Even the smallest efforts — making certain that bathrooms have soap, for example, so hands can be washed — often are not undertaken, she wrote.
“In our dorm, we are pretty much never by ourselves. You’re always within arms’ reach of another person — like when you’re talking on the phone, you’re within arms’ reach of about seven other people who are either using the phones or waiting for their turn,” said one of the plaintiffs, 37-year-old April Hoover, in the suit.
Hoover takes medication for heart disease, high cholesterol and high blood pressure and has been placed on chronic care in the prison, according to the suit. She lives in a small cell with another woman on a floor where 18 inmates share two open toilets and a shower.
On May 26, the first COVID-19 infection was confirmed at the women’s prison in a medical employee who works there on contract. Two more infected employees followed, a corrections officer who tested positive on June 1 and a food service worker who tested positive on June 3.
When the Herald-Leader asked June 9 about a possible COVID-19 outbreak at the women’s prison because of the infected employees, Corrections Department spokeswoman Lisa Lamb denied it. Lamb told the newspaper there were “no current inmate cases. Contact tracing was conducted to test individuals who had been in contact with the positive individuals, and all tests were negative.”
The next day, June 10, the prison went into lockdown to restrict inmate movement, according to the ACLU’s suit. Twenty-six inmates who showed symptoms of COVID-19 were quarantined and tested for the virus. On June 11, test results came back positive for 11 of them.
In a letter sent Friday to the ACLU, state corrections officials said they have started mass testing and housing segregation at the women’s prison, according to the suit. But as with the previous outbreak at Green River, the prison almost certainly waited too late to act, Gatnarek wrote.
“In the light of near-complete lack of social distancing practices and frequent interactions of people between dorms prior to the initiation of the ‘controlled containment’ strategy on June 12, the virus has likely already had ample opportunity to spread throughout KCIW,” Gatnarek wrote. “A widespread outbreak of COVID-19 at KCIW is likely inescapable.”
This story was originally published June 15, 2020 at 12:47 PM.
