[nytimes.com 3/29/21] A judge in the Bronx ruled that people incarcerated in the state’s prisons and jails had been arbitrarily excluded from the coronavirus vaccine rollout. New York must immediately begin to offer Covid vaccines to all incarcerated people in the state’s prisons and jails, a judge ruled on Monday, making the state one of few in the nation to provide doses to such a broad population behind bars. The order, the first involving any of the country’s largest correctional systems, comes as the coronavirus continues to roar through facilities in New York.…
Read MoreTag: Coronavirus
MN: Third COVID death at Moose Lake sex offender facility
A client housed in a Minnesota sex offender treatment facility has died from COVID-19, state officials said Monday. Friday’s death at the Moose Lake facility is the third COVID-related fatality in the Minnesota Sex Offender Program (MSOP) since the pandemic surfaced early last year in Minnesota. “We mourn his passing and extend our deepest sympathy to those who loved him and called him friend,” according to a statement from Human Services Commissioner Jodi Harpstead, whose agency runs the program. “The toll the pandemic continues to take in human lives is…
Read MoreCA: Orange County sheriff refuses to release 1,800 inmates after judge’s order: ‘Serious threat’ to community
[yahoo.com Fox News – 12/15/20] Sheriff Don Barnes, Orange County, Calif., reacts to judge’s order reducing prison population amid coronavirus pandemic. Fox Newscaster (at 3:40): “We don’t want anyone to get COVID, but we don’t want anyone murdered or molested”. Sheriff: “I have no intention of releasing them.” Watch the video
Read MoreCA: High-risk inmates aren’t prioritized in state’s early releases
[calmatters.org – 12/11/20] In summary: More than 7,500 prisoners sent home in the program — which aims to slow the spread of COVID-19 — would have been released within months anyway. Thousands with health conditions remain in prison, and the virus keeps spreading. In July, amid an epidemic of coronavirus cases, California’s corrections agency rolled out early-release programs touted as a solution to protect inmates at overcrowded prisons. But nearly all of the prisoners selected were scheduled to be released within months anyway, while many inmates with longer sentences remain…
Read MoreEngland: WW2 veteran, 97, spared jail for sex offences over fears of COVID
[yahoo.com – 12/11/20] A World War Two veteran has avoided jail for sexually assaulting five women because of fears he may catch coronavirus in prison. Richard ____, 97, walked free from court despite “passing the custody threshold” and was instead given a 16 month sentence, suspended for two years. He was also put on the sex offenders register for ten years. Read the full article
Read MoreOK: Sex-Offense Registry Sweeps Intended to Boost Support for Cops Unwittingly Spread COVID-19
[shadowproof.com – 11/2/20] The Oklahoma City Police Department pulled off a social media coup on July 7. “Meet the top 10 most wanted individuals being sought by our Sex Offender Registration Unit,” the department posted on its Facebook page. “It’s important we keep tabs on these guys (and gal), so help us find them.” The post engaged a huge number of readers, receiving 1,500 shares and nearly 500 comments. Told dangerous people were loose on city streets, readers responded. “[She] works at [a local store] I’m fucking sick!” posted one.…
Read MoreCalifornia ordered to halve San Quentin population after showing ‘deliberate indifference,’ court says
[yahoo.com – 10/23/20] OAKLAND, Calif. — A state appellate court has ordered San Quentin State Prison to halve its inmate population, which would require transferring or releasing some 1,700 inmates. The ruling from the state’s First Court of Appeals sends a clear message that officials overseeing San Quentin have not done enough to protect inmates from the coronavirus after a summer outbreak. “We agree that respondents — the Warden and CDCR — have acted with deliberate indifference and relief is warranted,” the court said in its opinion. The court ordered…
Read MoreSacramento Caravan: #SayTheirNames & Bring Our Loved Ones Home on Thursday, August 13
[#SayTheirNames] On Thursday, August 13 there will be a #SayTheirNames action at the CA Capitol Building followed by a car caravan to CDCR and a candlelight vigil at night to honor lives lost. For details, read this Facebook page, and click on the graphic at the top of the page. For a schedule, scroll down the Facebook page. Demand a #MoratoriumOnCovidBehindBars: * HONOR the lives of those who have died from COVID-19 behind bars. * EXPOSE how the state continues to threaten the lives of incarcerated people in overcrowded prisons.…
Read MoreEarly Jail Releases During Pandemic Didn’t Lead to Crime Spike: Study
[thecrimereport.org – 7/27/20] A study of 29 U.S. cities has found no correlation between the early release of detainees from the cities’ jails due to COVID-19 fears and any increase in crime in those cities between March and May. “The analysis confirmed that the amount by which a county changed their jail population wasn’t correlated with the amount of change in crime,” said the report by the American Civil Liberties Union, “Decarceration and Crime During Covid-19,” released Monday. “We found no evidence of any spikes in crime in any of…
Read MoreNY: Homeless Man Jailed for Failing to Put Address on Sex Offender Registry Dies at Rikers
[thecity.nyc – 7/20/20] On March 4, Hector Rodriguez was sent to Rikers Island because he failed to log his address with state’s sex offender registry — even though he had been homeless for years. Rodriguez died June 21 on his jail bed, while struggling to breathe during a severe asthma attack, according to Correction Department records and a family lawyer. He was 60 years old and had contracted COVID-19 in April, the lawyer said. For criminal justice reform advocates and even one city group that represents victims, Rodriguez’s death behind…
Read MoreCA: California Will Release Up To 8,000 Prisoners Due To Coronavirus
[npr.org – 7/10/20] California will release up to 8,000 prisoners this summer in an effort to create more space and prevent the spread of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 in prisons. News of the plan comes after more than a third of the inmates and staff at the San Quentin State Prison in the San Francisco Bay Area tested positive for the coronavirus. Anyone who is eligible for release will be tested for the coronavirus within seven days of their return to society, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation…
Read MoreCA Governor Extends Encouragement to Stop In-Person Registration
[ACSOL] California Governor Gavin Newsom has extended the provisions of an Executive Order that encourages local law enforcement organizations to forego in-person registration. The original Order, issued on May 8, included a waiver from obtaining individuals’ fingerprints and photographs for a period of 60 days. The Governor’s revised Order was issued quietly on June 30 without a press release. According to the revised Order, the provisions in the original Order are extended until the revised order is “modified or rescinded, or until the State of Emergency is terminated, whichever occurs…
Read MoreCA: COVID Cuts A Lethal Path Through San Quentin’s Death Row
[californiahealthline.org – 7/8/20] The old men live in cramped spaces and breathe the same ventilated air. Many are frail, laboring with heart disease, liver and prostate cancer, tuberculosis, dementia. And now, with the coronavirus advancing through their ranks, they are falling one after the next. This is not a nursing home, not in any traditional sense. It is California’s death row at San Quentin State Prison, north of San Francisco. Its 670 residents are serial killers, child murderers, men who killed for money and drugs, or shot their victims as…
Read MoreKat’s Blog: The Price of Public Shaming
Shame or being shamed is not something new to registrants or their families. Whether it’s personal feelings of shame or feelings of shame bestowed upon them by others, it’s a hurt that stays with each of us. Perhaps that’s why it’s so disturbing to see the increase in “mask-shaming” when we turn on the news. In the past few days, the events at a coffee shop and a retail grocer have garnered the public’s attention. People being publicly shamed and videoed for not wearing masks in stores during the pandemic…
Read MoreCA: COVID-19 is a death sentence for many California prisoners. Gov. Gavin Newsom must act
In 2019, Gov. Gavin Newsom imposed a death penalty moratorium in California. Will it matter? The COVID-19 outbreak unfolding at San Quentin State Prison – and in other jail and prison facilities around the state – may impose death sentences on people who never received them from the courts. As of Wednesday, over 1,100 of San Quentin’s 3,000 inmates had tested positive for the virus and one had died. Dozens were hospitalized, but hospitals had started to reject further transfers from the prison, according to the Marin Independent-Journal. The problem…
Read MoreNM: Massive COVID-19 outbreak at a southern NM prison hits just one type of inmates — sex offenders. That’s by design.
[http://nmindepth.com – 6/27/20] As the coronavirus established a foothold in southern New Mexico’s Otero County Prison Facility in mid-May, state officials quietly moved 39 inmates out of the massive complex near the Texas border to another prison near Santa Fe. The inmates shared something in common: None was a sex offender. In the days before the 39 departed the massive correctional complex where New Mexico’s only sex offender treatment program is housed, officials were still transferring sex offenders from other state prisons into Otero. It was a routine practice they…
Read MoreJanice’s Journal: Let My People Go
How dare they! How dare the CA Department of Corrections[1] once again deny rights to individuals solely because they have been convicted of a sex offense. Didn’t they learn? The department has recently lost every case in which another of their “mistakes” involving registrants was challenged. Those cases were focused upon the department’s regulations which denied the benefits of Proposition 57 to every person convicted of a non-violent sex offense[2]. The number of Proposition 57 lawsuits is large and includes successful challenges by ACSOL at both the trial and appellate…
Read MoreNC: Guilford County investigating jail inmate’s in-custody death
[wxii12.com – 6/25/20] GREENSBORO, N.C. —A Greensboro man’s death is under investigation after he died in custody at the Guilford County Detention Center Tuesday morning. Guilford County Sheriff Danny Rogers said Jeffery Johnson, 61, died as the result of a lengthy and chronic medical condition at the Greensboro facility at about 10:20 a.m. Johnson was arrested by the Guilford County Sheriff’s Office on May 14 and charged with two counts of failure to register as a sex offender. Authorities said Johnson was processed and then taken to the Greensboro Detention…
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