Nick Pinto looks into pandemic medical neglect in federal prisons.
—Erika
—Erika
A federal judge last week denied a request by people held in a federal jail in Brooklyn to order officials to improve their efforts to prevent a coronavirus outbreak in the facility.
The incarcerated people had alleged a level of medical neglect at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn that rose to the degree of unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment. They sought a temporary injunction ordering jail officials to improve medical care and disease prevention at the jail, as well as appointing a special master empowered to oversee those changes.
Judge Rachel Kovner ruled against this request, finding that the people held at MDC Brooklyn had failed to show that jail officials had displayed “deliberate indifference to a substantial risk of serious harm,” the legal standard for a constitutional violation in this sort of case. Kovner acknowledged deficiencies in medical care at the jail but concluded that “the facility’s aggressive response to a public health emergency with no preexisting playbook belies the suggestion that these apparent deficiencies are the product of deliberate indifference on the part of prison officials.”
“Petitioners have not established a clear or substantial likelihood that prison officials have violated the Eighth Amendment through deliberate indifference to substantial risks of serious harm at the MDC,” Kovner wrote. “They are therefore not entitled to the extraordinary relief they seek: a preliminary injunction at the outset of this case that would release hundreds of prisoners and subject many aspects of the facility’s operations to judicial control.”
Kovner did find that the Bureau of Prisons had spoliated evidence — that is, knowingly destroyed evidence relevant to the lawsuit — when it persisted in an evidently longstanding practice of shredding the requests for medical care submitted on paper slips by people held at the jail. Homer Venters, an expert in correctional medical care who inspected the jail on behalf of the incarcerated people bringing the lawsuit, had pointed to this destruction of medical records as part of a systemic effort on the part of jail officials to track the incidence of Covid-19 among the patients in their custody, calling it “especially egregious and intentionally designed to avoid knowing the extent of the outbreak and providing the necessary care.”
“The fact that the MDC engaged in the destruction of evidence during the litigation is unprecedented finding against a BOP facility,” lawyers for the incarcerated people wrote in a statement on the ruling, “one that should stand as a reminder to other prison officials that they are not above the rules.”
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SEE ALSO:
Serving a sentence should not be a LIFE sentence.
We have a major problem in this nation.
This is ALABAMA:
We have a major problem in this nation.
This is ALABAMA:
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