With COVID-19 cases climbing, NC women’s prison plans mass testing this week

The number of positive COVID-19 cases skyrocketed over the weekend at the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women, and the state announced it would conduct mass testing this week of the entire prison.

The state women’s prison in Raleigh has 139 confirmed cases of COVID-19, up 47 cases in three days, according to the state Department of Public Safety website.

The facility, located at 1034 Bragg St., has a capacity for 1,776 inmates. The NC DPS site says that 769 inmates have been tested. NCCIW has reported one COVID-19 related death.

Across the state, 880 inmates have tested positive for COVID-19 through Monday. The outbreak at NCCIW is the second largest in the state prison system, following Neuse Correctional Institution, which has had 466 positive cases.

Inmates in one housing unit showed coronavirus symptoms last week, DPS said in a news release. After they tested positive, the agency said, all 227 inmates in the unit were tested, with 45 testing positive. The prison has isolated the inmates who tested positive and quarantined others in the unit who tested negative but may have been exposed, DPS said.

Inmates worried

Pamela Humphrey, an inmate at the Canary work release unit of the prison, spoke with a reporter from the Charlotte Observer about the conditions.

Several officers who work at the main camp at NCCIW, where dozens of women have recently tested positive, have also been working at the Canary Unit, a separate minimum custody unit a block away, she said. That, she said, has worried her and other women in the Canary Unit.

“If you’re up there, you can be a carrier and expose the people down here,” she said. “...Tensions are very high to say the least.”

Despite the risk of transmission, none of the inmates in the Canary Unit have been tested in weeks, she said.

But for more than three months, the inmates there have been quarantined or segregated, she said. The women have been confined to their dorms for most of their days, with just an hour allowed each day for outdoor recreation, she said.

“It wears on you,” she said.

Sandra Richardson’s daughter, Christina Boone, is an inmate at NCCIW and is set to be released in November. Richardson spoke with The News & Observer Monday afternoon, voicing her concerns about the situation at NCCIW.

“I’m afraid my daughter is going to die in there,” Richardson said in a phone interview. “She’s sick. She’s supposed to be on anxiety meds and they won’t give her her medication. But it’s not only her, it’s a lot of the women there.”

DPS said in the news release that the prison handled those who tested positive last week in keeping with guidance from health authorities.

“The positive offenders were separated and placed in medical isolation, and the negative offenders who were potentially exposed to the virus were placed under medical quarantine, with close observation and twice daily temperature checks,” the release says.

Testing ordered

Visitation at NCCIW has been suspended since March 16. In May, inmates at NCCIW told reporters from the News & Observer and Charlotte Observer that it was impossible to socially distance at the facility.

Last month the N&O, the Observer and other media outlets reported that Wake County Superior Court Judge Vince Rozier Jr. found state prison officials “failed to provide substantial COVID-19 testing” and transferred inmates between facilities without enough protection from COVID-19.

Rozier also found prison officials had violated the state’s responsibility to care for the medical needs of inmates. Rozier’s order required prison officials to come up with a plan to test all inmates in the state’s prison system and to create a plan to identify the disparities in prevention strategies between different prison facilities.

On June 18, Gov. Roy Cooper and Todd Ishee, the state’s commissioner of prisons, announced that testing would begin for all inmates in the state prison system. At the time Ishee said it would take 60 days to test all 31,200 inmates in North Carolina. Since that time, offenders being transferred between state facilities are to either be tested before the transfer or placed in a 14-day quarantine.

Richardson told the N&O that her daughter, who has been at NCCIW since March, has not been tested.

“They have not tested them for the COVID and they are taking them out of that prison left and right,” Richardson said. “She has not been feeling good the last couple of days, and she’s told them. They just won’t do anything about it.”

Richardson said she spoke with her daughter Monday afternoon. She’s made several calls to the prison to voice her concerns, but said “they won’t talk to me.”

Boone works in the kitchen at NCCIW, according to her mom, who told the N&O that staff in the kitchen got sick and officers were delivering meals to cells. Richardson’s daughter told her the inmates have not been given cleaning supplies to sanitize their living areas, she said.

“They are getting treated like animals down there,” Richardson said. “It’s ridiculous.”

As of Monday afternoon, there were 74,529 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in North Carolina and 1,398 deaths.

Ames Alexander of The Charlotte Observer contributed to this story.

This story was originally published July 5, 2020 at 8:23 PM with the headline "With COVID-19 cases climbing, NC women’s prison plans mass testing this week."