The American Civil Liberties Union is suing on behalf of inmates in a Louisiana prison who are worried about contracting the coronavirus behind bars.
The ACLU announced the lawsuit against Federal Bureau of Prisons Director Michael Carvajal and Oakdale Federal Detention Center Warden J.P. Young on Monday. The civil rights group is suing on behalf of an inmate in Young’s Louisiana-based prison, where five inmates have died from COVID-19, arguing that keeping prisoners confined during a pandemic amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.
“Public health experts are consistent in warning that prisons and jails are extremely dangerous incubators for this disease. Conditions are now deadly — threatening the health of incarcerated people, staff, and the surrounding community,” said Alanah Odoms Hebert, executive director at the ACLU of Louisiana, in a Monday press release.
“What we are seeing on the ground does not encourage us that the federal government is acting with the urgency that will be required to protect Louisianans from this pandemic,” Herbert added.
Attorney General William Barr has told prisons in a handful of states hardest hit by the coronavirus to place qualifying prisoners in home confinement to reduce prison populations. The prisoners allowed out of the lockup are vetted for their risk to the public, time left in their sentence, and other factors.
“The Department of Justice has finally recognized the tremendous humanitarian and public health crisis that our mass incarceration crisis presents during this pandemic — around the country and especially in Louisiana,” ACLU senior attorney Somil Trivedi said. “We share the department’s goal of stopping COVID-19 in its tracks but are deeply concerned that relief is coming too slowly. We must act now to avoid the worst-case scenario here.”
Louisiana is a hot spot for COVID-19, and two of the state’s parishes contain the largest death rates for the disease in the United States. In addition to the five prisoners who have died from the coronavirus at Oakdale, nearly two dozen others have been infected.
