Didn’t have time to tweet about it earlier, but I listened in on a phone conference hearing in the class action case against the D.C. DOC for its handling of the COVID-19 outbreak in the D.C. Jail. Some good info from the call threaded below.

First, background: some have been raising the alarm about conditions in the jail for weeks now. Among the allegations: a lack of access to soap & sanitizing equipment, long delays to get seen by a medic, inadequate social distancing measures. More here: https://dcist.com/story/20/04/08/coronavirus-cases-at-the-d-c-jail-have-grown-seven-fold-since-last-week/

The court recently appointed two monitors, Grace Lopes and Mark Jordan, to conduct an investigation of the jail conditions. This call was to go over some of their preliminary findings.

I’ll write a fuller story about this as the case goes on. But some highlights. Lopes & Jordan conducted 3 unannounced visits to the jail. Reported policy at the jail is that, as soon as a medic suspects COVID, the inmate is placed on cell restriction until they’ve been tested.

In quarantine units, investigators reported that staff “for the most part, not always” wore masks. Some of the masks were ill-fitting & in poor condition. Quarantined inmates were always required to wear masks outside their cells, but some were ill-fitting, soiled, or ripped.

“In March, there were not significant quantities of masks for staff or inmates,” Lopes said. DOC has now said it’s providing masks to all inmates on all housing units, but the investigators haven’t been able to confirm this change

The investigators also reported serious concerns about staffing shortages, especially at CTF. According to policy, only 5 inmates should be out of their cells at any one time, but investigators reported seeing many more than that, and that they were not social distancing.

There was no attempt by staff to enforce social distancing among inmates, the investigators said, because there simply isn’t enough staff to do it.

Another issue: inmates are reportedly unable to make confidential legal calls bc of staffing issues and social distancing. They can call lawyers on phones in public areas, but it’s impossible for these to be meaningfully confidential, and inmates are afraid they’re being recorded

Most striking to me was what investigators said about inmates in isolation. These inmates are not allowed to leave their cells at all, including to shower. Some have been in isolation for 9 days or longer than that without access to a shower. They bathe themselves in the sink.

Investigators said they saw inmates wearing the same clothes over and over, that they were “visibly soiled,” and there were complaints about "substantial delays" in access to fresh linens.

“Inmates in isolation volunteered that isolation is far too punitive and if they had it to do over again they never would have reported their symptoms in the first place,” Lopes said. Conditions are “plainly a disincentive" to report symptoms, she said.