By John Cheves and Beth Musgrave
Lexington Herald-Leader
LEXINGTON, Ky. — A Lexington federal prison with a coronavirus outbreak that has killed four inmates and infected nearly 280 prisoners will not release information about whether it has allowed some inmates to be moved or released on home incarceration to thin the population.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons won’t reveal the number of inmates from any individual prison, including the Federal Medical Center on Leestown Road, that has been released to home confinement, said spokesman Emery Nelson in Washington. Reducing the population can help stem outbreaks within the prisons.
Nationally, 3,610 federal inmates have been released so far, according to the bureau.
Meanwhile, frustration over the lack of information about the outbreak at the Federal Medical Center continues. Lexington-Fayette County Health Department officials and the city of Lexington have tried repeatedly to get information about cases there and about how the illness is being contained. But cooperation from the prison has been limited, city officials have said.
The health department has provided hundreds of COVID-19 test kits to the prison in hopes that more than 400 staff would be tested, said Dr. Kraig Humbaugh, Fayette County public health commissioner. To date more than 200 employees have been tested, some more than once, he said.
Mayor Linda Gorton and the health department have no authority over the prison because it is federal property. To date, at least five staff members have tested positive for COVID-19, Humbaugh said during Gorton’s COVID-19 update on Wednesday.
As of Thursday morning, 279 inmates had tested positive.
“Fourteen are currently in the hospital and five are in the intensive care unit,” Humbaugh said Wednesday.
Humbaugh said the testing of staff started only after the intervention of federal elected officials, including U.S. Sens. Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell and U.S. Rep. Andy Barr.
Gorton said Gov. Andy Beshear, frustrated by the lack of cooperation, called Vice President Mike Pence about the outbreak at the Federal Medical Center.
“We had to do everything that we could,” Gorton said.
Barr, R-Lexington, said he has pushed the Bureau of Prisons to increase testing at the facility, particularly for corrections staff who are going in and out the prison and out into the community. Barr said he initially spoke to the warden at Federal Medical Center and was still not satisfied with the response. He asked officials with the U.S. Department of Justice for help, who then referred him to a regional administrator over the Bureau of Prisons.
Barr said when the first inmate arrived at the University of Kentucky Chandler Hospital, corrections officers were not wearing personal protection equipment, which alarmed UK staff, who then contacted Barr. Barr said he has been contacted by Gorton, family members of inmates there, correction officers, UK and public health officials about the outbreak at the facility.
The prison has told him it now has adequate personal protection equipment. Testing of staff has improved but not by much, he said. Barr’s staff now receives weekly updates from Federal Medical Center officials.
“Sometimes we have to call multiple times to get them,” Barr said of those weekly updates. “I have offered multiple times to help and they have not asked me for anything.”
The Kentucky congressman said he has been told only 160 of the 400 staff there have been tested. Those are different numbers then what has been reported to Humbaugh.
“Things have improved. I am not satisfied with the level of testing of the corrections officers,” Barr said.
The Bureau of Prisons has also told Barr they can’t mandate staff be tested. Barr said he’s investigating whether that’s accurate and if more can’t be done to get more staff tested.
Barr said prison officials have also assured him that prisoners returning from UK hospital will be placed in quarantine.
“That’s very important,” Barr said. “What we have seen in nursing homes is that when people return from a hospital, they can still shed the virus.”
Barr said if things don’t improve, he will go back to the Department of Justice and demand more transparency from the Bureau of Prisons.
Barr said he has also not been told how many inmates have been transferred or released on home incarceration. The prison is a medical facility. That means the inmates there are typically older or have underlying health conditions — they are prisoners most at-risk for having serious complications from COVID-19.
Despite pressure from federal and local elected leaders, officials with the Bureau of Prisons admitted May 22 that testing of inmates was still limited at the facility even as the number of positive cases at the Federal Medical Center climbed and four inmates died. The prison has more than 1,300 inmates, according to its web site.
Decreasing the number of people confined in a prison or jail may help slow or stop the spread of the highly contagious respiratory disease.
Gorton, working with Fayette County judges and prosecutors, released nearly 50 low-level inmates at the Fayette County Detention Center in March to keep the jail’s population down as the respiratory virus began to spread. There has been no widespread outbreak at the jail.
Federal prison officials said they are continuing to review inmates eligible for release.
”Inmates do not need to apply to be considered for home confinement. Case management staff are urgently reviewing all inmates to determine which ones meet the criteria,” Nelson told the Herald-Leader this week.
The bureau’s release procedures have confused inmates and their loved ones since Attorney General William Barr issued different memos on the subject in March and April. A federal judge in New York has called the rules “illogical” and “Kafkaesque.”
Under the bureau’s current guidelines, priority is given to inmates with health risks who have served at least half of their sentences, as well as those housed at several federal prisons with particularly lethal COVID-19 outbreaks, including one in Elkton, Ohio. And in order to qualify, inmates can’t be serving time for crimes of violence, sex or terrorism.
Some inmates at Lexington’s Federal Medical Center say they initially were cleared for release to home confinement only to be denied later.
Scott Doumas, 48, said his prison caseworker told him April 18 that he was approved for release, along with two other Federal Medical Center inmates he knew. Two weeks later, the men were told the rules had changed in ways that excluded them from the list.
“I was shocked,” said Doumas.
Doumas is roughly halfway through a four-year sentence for mail fraud and conspiracy. His release date is Dec. 8, 2022. But he said his prison caseworker told him that his sentence completion fell just short of the 50 percent mark now required for eligibility.
“I asked, ‘How could I have qualified and then, 11 days later, I no longer qualify?’ He said, ‘Well, the rules changed,’” Doumas wrote to the Herald-Leader.
“I am very fearful of the situation here at FMC-Lexington. From what I am told, there are three units with active corona patients,” Doumas wrote. “I went to prison to serve a short prison term for a white-collar crime. I am just hoping this short term does not result in a death sentence.”
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