Consider This from NPR - COVID-19 Inmate Deaths in Prisons

Episode Date: March 8, 2022

Throughout the pandemic, the The Federal Bureau of Prisons has maintained that they have a plan to keep the pandemic under control. But federal prison records tell a different story.NPR's Meg Anderson dug into those those records. Many high risk inmates applied for compassionate release, or Home Confinement, where they could live at home while being monitored by the prison.But since the beginning of the pandemic nearly 300 prisoners have died from COVID-19, and almost all of them were elderly or had pre-existing conditions. What went wrong?In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

We all remember the panic and the fear that we felt in March of 2020 when the U.S. began shutting down because of the pandemic, a pandemic we didn't know much about at the time. Now, imagine how intense that fear would have been if you were an inmate then. That's how Waylon Youngbird was feeling in his federal prison in Springfield, Missouri, when he sat down and wrote a letter to a federal judge about his situation. Greetings, sir. Just a quick letter concerning the pandemic of the coronavirus affecting the United States. That's an NPR producer reading his words.

A lot of us here are very concerned for our own safety and worried for our families and relatives at home. Youngbird said he had heard on the news that some people had been saying the Federal Bureau of Prisons should reduce the population and make room for serious, violent, and high-risk level inmates. And let the low-risk, sick, terminally ill patients, non-violent inmates, to be given a change to go to home confinement or to be sent home for their families in this time of crisis. He asked for home confinement, which would allow him to go home while still being monitored by the prison. As a high-risk patient,

he was hoping he would get approved. He was not. Youngbird died in a prison medical facility from COVID in the fall of 2020. Consider this. For nearly two years now, thousands of federal inmates have been trying to get released from prison due to COVID risks. But many have failed. Since the start of the pandemic, nearly 300 prisoners have died from COVID-19.

From NPR, I'm Elsa Chang. It's Tuesday, March 8th. It's Consider This from NPR. Throughout the pandemic, the Federal Bureau of Prisons has said that they have a plan to keep the pandemic under control. But federal prison records tell a very different story. NPR's Meg Anderson dug into those records. If you look at the death rates in those prisons for the five years before the pandemic, you'd expect that in 2020, about 300 people would have died. But in fact, 462 people died. That's more than 50% higher. And last year, it was 20% higher. Since the start of the pandemic, nearly 300 prisoners have died from COVID-19. And many of the inmates who died of COVID tried to get out,

just like Waylon Youngbird. Many of us are at high risk of getting this virus because of our health conditions, the overcrowding conditions here, and the uncleanliness of this prison medical center. Youngbird was a prisoner in his early 50s, and he had a lot of health conditions that made him vulnerable to COVID. He was sick enough, in fact, that he was in a prison for inmates who need intensive medical care. And so he kept writing to that federal judge. If given the chance, I will prove I can stay out of trouble and follow the rules and conditions set for me. I know I'm not a bad person. I just made a few bad decisions in my life.

Youngbird had only been in his prison a few months for dealing drugs. He asked to be approved for something called home confinement, where you're still in prison custody, but you're being monitored at home. At the start of the pandemic, it seemed like a lot of inmates might be able to go home in this way. That's because in order to help keep staff, prisoners, and the surrounding communities safe, the Bureau of Prisons needed to make the prison population much smaller and quickly. The consensus about that among public health experts, scientists, and doctors was nearly unanimous and nearly immediate. That's Patricia Richmond of the Federal Public and Community Defenders. It wasn't just health experts. The

Attorney General at the time, Bill Barr, pushed for home confinement too. And COVID relief legislation called the Justice Department identified hundreds of people who were potentially eligible for home confinement but had been denied by the BOP. At another prison, a federal judge called the slow release of inmates, quote, deliberate indifference. As of February of this year, 6% of the prison population has been transferred directly because of the CARES Act since the start of the pandemic. Many more people could have been transferred, there's no doubt, and that surely would have protected individuals who were both sent to home confinement and people who stayed behind. To be sure, not everyone can safely be released from prison. But NPR looked at the records of people who died from COVID. Almost all of them were elderly or had pre-existing conditions. The exact type of person the attorney general said needed to get out. So what went wrong? First of all, the Bureau of Prisons made the criteria strict. For instance, inmates had to have served half their sentence to be eligible. I think they overstepped their bounds.

Maureen Baird is a former warden. You have guys that are in prison now, late 70s, early 80s, mid 80s, that are no danger to the community. The Bureau of Prisons was the sole decision maker when it came to who got to go home and why. And Baird says that after the attorney general told the Bureau to prioritize home confinement, the BOP made the criteria for who could be eligible stricter. The Bureau did loosen some criteria over time, but current BOP employees told NPR that even with the high bar, they saw problems with how decisions were made. There was a list of people that was qualified and there was a list of people who left. If you're an inmate that had political influence and had money, you would probably get released rather than somebody who probably really should have gotten released. Joe Rojas, a teacher at a federal prison in Florida, said the release of people like Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort,

then President Trump's former lawyer and campaign chairman, raised eyebrows. But there was another reason that kept some people from going on home confinement. Some BOP employees said there just weren't enough people to do the work. They told NPR that understaffing made it hard to get through the home confinement paperwork. Mary Mellick works at a federal detention center in Miami. They pile up where you have a list and you can't get to it. So it takes on average one to two months to get everything processed for somebody that could have probably left in a week. The Bureau of Prisons declined an interview for this story. But in a statement, a spokesperson

told NPR, quote, all inmates are reviewed appropriately for CARES Act home confinement. By mid-2020, Waylon Youngbird, the prisoner writing letters to a judge, had been denied for home confinement. I know I just wrote to you, but I'm writing again. This morning around 10 a.m., an inmate next to me said, It's official now. The first case of the coronavirus is here. He wrote that he went back to his dorm unit and put his face mask on. He tried to call his family, but the lines were too long.

I don't know what to do. I'm scared like everyone else. Last month, after a prayer service, I decided I should write a last will and testament because if I catch the virus, it hits fast and I won't have much time to do anything. Youngbird had one other avenue to try, something called compassionate release, where your sentence is actually reduced and you're no longer in custody. Many other inmates were doing the same. Denied for home confinement, they were turning to the courts. But filing a motion for compassionate release is a slow process.

It's no match for a rapidly spreading virus. Before you can file one of those motions, you actually have to make that request to the Bureau of Prisons itself. And then after 30 days, you can file into court, right, if the warden doesn't do anything. Colin Prince, a federal public defender, says because wardens almost never approve those requests, those 30 days are often essentially just a waiting period. Once an inmate does get to court, it's the word of the inmate against the word of the Bureau of Prisons and the Justice Department. They were just writing, we've got this. We're experts in infectious disease. Here's the many policies we've put in place. And the public defender's offices are off in the distance here going, none of this is working. Prince did manage to get compassionate

release for some of his clients, like Ron Sheehy. Sheehy was at Lompoc Federal Prison, and he remembers an atmosphere where the pandemic did not feel under control. People trying to hold their cough in because, you know, it started an argument. And, you know, people trying to get up and rush to the bathroom so they don't cough. It was the worst at night. That's when you got people that was really getting sick. At nighttime, that's all you heard was just coughing all night. All night. By May 2020, three out of every four inmates at Lompoc had COVID.

Sheehy feels like he cheated death. We all was lucky to make through what we went through, and some of us didn't. NPR spoke with several BOP employees, who also raised issues with how the Bureau was handling the pandemic. We asked the BOP for comment, and they wrote that they worked closely with the CDC on a pandemic plan. Prince, the public defender again. My biggest criticism is that their leadership just wasn't really open and honest about the problems. And of the compassionate release motions that went to court, federal judges denied more than 80% of them. When we looked at the people who died of COVID in prison, we saw that one in four had tried to go home through compassionate release.

And at least three of them had their requests granted but died before they could actually be released. Many others died while their motions were pending. Some had been waiting months. I see these deaths as preventable. That's Allison Guernsey, a law professor at the University of Iowa who's been tracking COVID deaths in federal prison. We're not going to know the exact conditions of confinement in each and every prison unless and until there is an independent investigation. And she says until that investigation happens, the full story of just how many deaths might have been prevented will be unknown. I received your letter of denial to my compassionate release. I was surprised you denied me. In the fall of 2020, Waylon Youngbird's options were running out.

His letters had become increasingly desperate. By October, at least 200 inmates and staff were infected at Youngbird's prison. I'm afraid I may be infected by the time you receive this letter and would not be able to contact my family by then. Some staff, he said, had stopped coming to work. The situation isn't looking too good here. I just keep praying for my safety. Youngbird tested positive the next day. He died the following week. There was a person at the other end of those letters, Judge Roberto Lang in South Dakota, and he had been reading the letters

all along. It was Judge Lang who denied Youngbird's request for compassionate release, and he had been reading the letters all along. It was Judge Lange who denied Youngbird's request for compassionate release, and he thinks he got it right. It isn't cursory or cookie cutter. I really did think about Mr. Youngbird and his situation. I felt as if I had ruled properly under the circumstances in denying his motion for compassionate release. Youngbird had served only a small portion of his time, and during his pre-trial release, he had been using drugs. The judge thought he would be safer at the medical facility. And as a judge, Lange says it's hard to know exactly what's going on inside each of the 122 federal prison facilities. But when I see a medical doctor from the Bureau of Prisons write, in essence, that the individual

is receiving appropriate care, I tend to trust that. I certainly wish Mr. Youngbird were still alive, and I'm sad that he passed away. It's just tough. That's how best I can answer. Jolynn Little-Wounded, Youngbird's aunt, got a call in the early morning from the prison the week he died. Youngbird's mother was still asleep. I think I sat there for two or three hours and then I woke up my sister and my niece and told them. I just remembered them screaming and crying. If he had been released, she said, at least they would have been closer. He died a

horrible death in there by himself and that's the hardest part was that he died by himself. Youngbird's truck was parked in front of her house. It waited there for more than a year after his death, until the city finally came and towed it away. That was NPR's Meg Anderson. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Elsa Chang.