After months of warnings from attorneys, advocates, and incarcerated people regarding Santa Rita Jail’s severely insufficient sanitation and prevention measures, there has been an inevitable explosion in COVID-19 cases. Today, KTVU and the Sheriff report that about 40 people in Housing Unit 25 have tested positive for the novel coronavirus. These prisoners are employed in the jail’s kitchen and laundry by Aramark Correctional Services. Aramark is a third-party contractor which, along with the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, is a defendant in a class action lawsuit which alleges that prisoners are forced to work for no pay under threat of punishment. Forced labor is just one of the many concerns described by prisoners, who stated in a March 17 grievance that conditions inside Santa Rita were at a “crisis level” well before COVID-19 reached the jail.
To date, the jail has reported a total of 76 cases in the incarcerated population since late March. This wave of infections represents an over 50 percent increase in total cases in a matter of days. This is nothing less than gross negligence by Sheriff Ahern, who has refused to release any more prisoners unless specifically ordered to by the courts. Kitchen workers prepare meals not only for Santa Rita Jail but for other Bay Area jails which contract with Aramark. Food contamination could impact thousands of incarcerated people.
The recent outbreak in San Quentin demonstrates that it only takes a single event – a transfer, contact with infected staff – to cause a deadly outbreak. Judges and public officials have given ACSO and medical provider Wellpath far too much leeway to manage the jail’s COVID-19 response – as demonstrated by the $106 million annual budget increase approved by the Board of Supervisors in June. Now, they must reckon with the fact that the Sheriff’s Office has never proactively protected inmates. ACSO has simply been lucky that no one has died, despite palliative care which amounts only to locking prisoners in solitary confinement, where their vital signs are measured twice daily through a food tray slot.
For the past three months, attorneys and advocates have consistently received reports from prisoners that deputies and medical staff do not abide by the jail’s written protocols. Grievances by prisoners are routinely discarded or denied. Prisoners describe a number of issues which may have contributed to the spread of the virus, and which display a pattern of negligence:
• Deputies move between housing units without changing their gloves;
• Deputies have been observed lowering their masks or wearing no mask at all;
• Prisoners are transferred between units, often without regard to their infection status;
• Prisoners are not provided with adequate cleaning supplies or PPE;
• Disinfectant wipes contain no alcohol and do not meet CDC recommendations;
• Prisoners are unable to socially distance and deputies do not abide by modified jail programs intended to reduce contact between prisoners. On July 13, a prisoner in Housing Unit 25 called the Santa Rita Jail Hotline to report that a Watch Commander transferred kitchen workers into his unit. The addition of these workers crowded the dorm, leading prisoners to sleep in close quarters. Then, one of the new people became sick. The prisoner, who is over 50 years old, has already contracted coronavirus once in April. Once his symptoms abated, he says, he was never re-tested and was simply placed back in general population – a practice that has been reported by multiple prisoners. He is now at risk of a second infection, in the center of an outbreak which was clearly caused by this transfer.
On July 14, the East Bay Times reported that Alameda County Deputy Sheriff Oscar Rocha has been in critical condition for two weeks after contracting COVID-19. Rocha is currently in intensive care on a ventilator. Santa Rita Jail has no clear policy requiring staff to be tested: staff entering the facility receive only a temperature check. On July 15, a prisoner who is currently housed in an isolation unit called the Santa Rita Jail hotline to report that he saw the news about Deputy Rocha. Deputy Rocha, he says, had a cough since June. When the prisoner asked him why he wasn't wearing a mask, Rocha said he was not sick, he was just “choking on a candy.” About three days later, the prisoner felt sick: he was coughing, having trouble breathing, and felt like he had a terrible cold. He requested to be tested for COVID-19 and was denied a test twice. Inadequate protective measures are dangerous to prisoners and deputies alike – yet there are no consequences for deputies who refuse to wear masks, nor any mechanisms to ensure that staff follow their own policies.
On July 15, a prisoner reported that “no one is paying attention to inmates unless they seem like they are dying.” The opaque and neglectful practices of the Sheriff have already caused enormous suffering for prisoners. To wait until this outbreak proves fatal is unacceptable. Substantial changes to business as usual – such as decarceration, and the humane treatment of people still inside the jail – are the only way to prevent this. Officials must see this new outbreak as a reason to demand no less than complete transparency.
The following actions must be taken immediately in order to protect the lives of those incarcerated at Santa Rita. These demands are informed by the needs of prisoners, through their communication with NLG-SF attorneys and the Santa Rita Jail Hotline.
• Release all pretrial prisoners to await their court dates in the community. Use this opportunity to create appropriate social distancing and provide medical care to prisoners who have been sentenced.
• Release sick prisoners who require medical care so that they can receive treatment at an adequate medical facility, not in jail.
• Cancel the Sheriff’s contract with Federal Marshals, meaning a reduction in the jail’s population by the 400-500 federal prisoners currently held at Santa Rita.
• Test all prisoners upon their release.
• Provide wraparound services such as housing and health care when prisoners are released.
• Make testing available at least once per month to every person held inside the jail. Provide appropriate and necessary care (such as extra blankets and more out of cell time) so that quarantine is not a punishment.
• Provide free, daily access to phone calls.
• Conduct unannounced inspections by an independent third party. Planned, guided tours of Santa Rita serve less as an opportunity to assess jail conditions, and more an opportunity for the jail to “clean up its act” for its visitors, which benefits only the jail’s fiction that it is following its own policies. Allow independent third party to review prisoners’ grievances.
• Create real consequences for deputies who fail to wear personal protective equipment. Deputies who refuse to wear masks should be disciplined and face consequences for this dangerous behavior.
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