Concerned family members of inmates incarcerated in the Lompoc federal penitentiary organized a car rally on April 25 in hopes that the prison would answer to their demands, including moving nonviolent offenders to home confinement, restoring phone and internet access to inmates, providing personal protective equipment for all staff and inmates, and access to COVID-19 testing.
“It was very peaceful. We had a few cars, but I think that it will grow next week,” rally organizer Alexandria told the Sun. “Over time, hopefully, they will return the use of the telephones, the internet, and the commissary, which is what we’re asking for. Hopefully they will depopulate the prison by releasing the nonviolent offenders to home confinement.”
Alexandria—who said her son is in the low-security facility on a nonviolent drug charge and has an upcoming release date later this year—is concerned for the safety of inmates at Lompoc amid one of the worst federal prison outbreaks of COVID-19 in the country. She asked that only her first name be used out of concerns of retaliation for her son.
“If you have over 200 people in one dormitory that are an arm’s distance away, there’s no way you can do social distancing unless you depopulate,” she said. “We’re not even asking for him to be home free, we’re saying home confinement is fine.”
Alexandria said she believes the Lompoc prison management is not releasing as many inmates to home confinement as they could be, per orders by United States Attorney General William Barr to prioritize home confinement as a response to the pandemic.
“I was hoping that the prison would consider the memo that was sent by Attorney General William Barr on March 26,” she said. “In that memo to the [Bureau of Prisons], he said that prisoners should be released if they have good conduct in the prison, and if they are nonviolent offenders. Of course they prioritized older people and sick, but they didn’t say it had to be.”
In the letter that Alexandria is referring to, Barr sets out six different criteria that federal prisons should consider when assessing which inmates might be chosen for transfer to home confinement. The top of the list is “the age and vulnerability of the inmate to COVID-19.”
Other factors Barr asks the bureau to consider include “the security level of the facility currently holding the inmate, with priority given to inmates residing in low- and minimum-security facilities,” as well as “the inmate’s conduct in prison” and “the inmate’s crime of conviction, and assessment of danger posed by the inmate to the community.”
While Alexandria’s son doesn’t meet the “age and vulnerability” standard, she feels that his good conduct and the security level of his facility makes him a strong candidate for home confinement, based on the other categories set out by Barr. Lompoc’s prisons consist of U.S. Penitentiary Lompoc, a medium-security facility, and FCI Lompoc, a low-security federal correctional institution.
“And he’s not even being considered for release,” she said.
Scott Taylor, a Bureau of Prisons (BOP) public affairs official, told the Sun in an April 28 email that, since Barr’s March 26 letter, they’ve released 1,576 inmates to home confinement across all BOP facilities. The bureau didn’t answer the Sun’s request for the specific number of inmates released from Lompoc’s facility, stating, “Given the fluid nature of the pandemic situation, we are just providing the total number of inmates transferred to home confinement across the Bureau of Prisons.”
Taylor also stated that, in response to the Attorney General’s directives, “the BOP began immediately reviewing all inmates who have COVID-19 risk factors, as described by the CDC, to determine which inmates are suitable for home confinement.” The email response didn’t mention consideration of any of the other criteria for home confinement that Barr included in his letter.
Taylor wrote that the bureau has the discretion to choose “which home confinement cases are appropriate for review in order to fight the spread of the pandemic.” So while the bureau must work under Barr’s guidelines, Taylor said that the Department of Justice confirmed that ultimate discretion lies with the bureau.
U.S. Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-Santa Barbara) has penned multiple letters of concern over the Lompoc prison outbreak to BOP officials, asking that prison leadership quickly build a mobile hospital to house sick prisoners, obtain more ventilators, and increase personal protective equipment for staff.
Alexandria commended these actions, but also expressed that, in her opinion, more can be done.
“The depopulation of the inmates I think is key. The ones that are not violent and have a release date that’s soon, that have been doing well: Let them go to home confinement,” she said. “Depopulate it so that you can then work with the population you have left.”
In regard to moving prisoners to home confinement, Carbajal wrote in an April 24 email statement to the Sun that “We should be assessing every measure to safely stop the spread in the Lompoc facility and in our community at large.” The congressman also reiterated the need for a health facility and ventilators at the prison site.
“We are hearing stories of inmates being sent home without proper care and of workers sleeping in their vehicles to protect their families from the virus,” he wrote. “Everyone deserves better and the bureau must act swiftly.”
This article appears in Apr 30 – May 7, 2020.