Prison in NC needs to release more inmates to combat COVID-19, congressman says
A North Carolina congressman is using the legislation that provides spending for the U.S. Justice Department to push federal officials to release more inmates from Butner and other prisons hard hit by the coronavirus.
U.S. Rep. David Price, a Chapel Hill Democrat, amended the spending bill to include a provision addressing what he sees as a lack of effort to reduce the risk of the virus’ spread through prisons by releasing medically vulnerable inmates.
“We expect accountability, and we also expect a full implementation of early release, compassionate release,” Price said in an interview. “We expect full implementation of that in a facility that most obviously needs it and warrants it.”
When the virus began hitting prisons four months ago, Congress and U.S. Attorney General William Barr set up processes for the early release of those inmates, which while protecting them, also reduces the prison population and makes it easier for inmates and staff to social distance.
Price introduced the amendment in the Commerce, Justice, and Science Appropriations Committee. His amendment said the committee is concerned about the “total low percentage of inmates released, particularly at facilities with high numbers of positive cases.
“Therefore, the Committee urges (the Bureau) to brief the Committee within 30 days of the date of enactment of this Act on the status of efforts to increase home confinement as a response during the pandemic.”
The amendment cleared the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday and is expected to go for a full House vote in two weeks. It would have to then be approved by the Senate.
Price said a joint report by The Marshall Project and The News & Observer last week raised more alarm when he learned that two inmates had spent weeks fighting for their release, only to catch the virus as they left. Both carried the virus on commercial planes.
The two medically vulnerable inmates — Alan Hurwitz and Juan Ramon — could not persuade prison officials to release them, so they appealed to their sentencing judges, who ruled they should go home. But by then, the virus was spreading through the low-security prison that housed them. Ramon made it home and recovered, but Hurwitz died in a Denver hospital before he could make the final leg of his plane trip home.
Family members of both inmates said they had not been tested for the virus before their release.
Calling it a “chilling story,” Price said it reflected an absence of protocols and guidance within the bureau. He also said the risk to the public might have been avoided had the inmates been released sooner.
“Obviously these were meritorious cases, that’s not the point,” Price said. “The point is once they were having to be shipped home, how do you do that? And maybe there’s no absolutely safe way, but there’s certainly better than what they did.”
Butner leads all federal prison facilities in inmate deaths. It is also the only complex to have a confirmed coronavirus death of a staff member. Charlynn Phillips, a senior correctional officer, died June 2.
The Marshall Project and the N&O reported last week that the number of inmates the prison had given early release to in the first two months was lower than those released by judges. Over that period, officials released fewer than 50 out of 4,700 incarcerated people at Butner to home confinement. That’s less than 1%, while the average for BOP prisons is 2.5%, according to court records and agency statistics.
Bureau officials have defended their handling of the coronavirus. They say Butner has many inmates vulnerable to the virus because the complex is home to a medical center and the four prisons there house many chronically ill patients.
Price, U.S. Rep. G.K. Butterfield, a Wilson Democrat, and Sen. Thom Tillis, a Huntersville Republican, have written two joint letters to Justice officials regarding Butner. On April 14, they asked Barr to give Butner high consideration for early release as the virus began hitting one of two medium-security prisons at the complex. They sent a second letter to the bureau’s director, Michael Carvajal, on June 5 after Phillips died, asking what steps Butner is taking to keep staff and inmates safe.
Price said neither letter brought a response from the attorney general or bureau officials. Justin Long, a bureau spokesman, told the N&O in an email that the bureau doesn’t comment on correspondence with members of Congress.
A group of inmates at Butner filed a class action lawsuit on May 26 to force the immediate release of more medically vulnerable inmates, but a federal judge sided with prison officials and the suit has since been withdrawn.