Chris Scull, who spent 22 years in San Quentin and was released last month, tested positive for COVID-19 in June while in prison. Scull now lives in transition homes in Hayward and experienced a second lockdown after one of his housemates tested positive for the virus. Photo by Anne Wernikoff for CalMatters.
###
Christopher Scull has vivid memories of the early summer in the San Quentin State Prison. During the worst of the prison outbreak, which has infected more than 2,200 inmates, it appeared that the siren ‘man down’ blew every half hour, signaling a medical emergency. The other residents fell to the ground while staff walked away, carrying a sick prisoner in a wheelchair or on a gurney.
Desperate to control the outbreak at the overcrowded prisons in California, state officials opened the gates to thousands of inmates like Scull, including many before their planned release date.
Scull, who tested positive for the virus in June but had minor symptoms, was released from San Quentin in mid-July after serving 22 years for carjacking and robbery. He said officials hacked his release by several weeks, sending him to a motel in Gardena, south of Los Angeles, quarantine and recover.
From the start of the pandemic until the end of this month, California will release more than 11,000 inmates early – mostly non-violent criminals with less than a year to serve – reducing the prison population to a 30-year low .
Overwhelmed by the volume, the patchwork reentry system in California was scrambled to find transportation, housing, food and other services for released prisoners, many of whom were exposed to the virus.
As of this week, the state had released more than 300 inmates known to be infected.
Scull, 42, did not have time to finalize his parole plan before he was released.
“It was very chaotic,” Scull said. “All my support team, my employment, everything is in the Bay Area.” But he was taken to the motel in Los Angeles County with little supervision or guidance on what to do. “When I was released, I took it upon myself to track down the licensing agent,” he said.
While quarantining in the hotel room, Scull once stepped out: ‘I went to In and Out. Wow, that was great, ”he said.
Nonprofits, county officials and state officials were unwilling to deal with the influx of people released into motels, group homes and the community.
‘I had friends who protested and said,’ Leave them all out. I said, ‘You do not understand. There is no system out there that can handle this, ” said Judith Tata, executive director of the California Reentry Program, which provides services and pre-release services to San Quentin residents. “We have people passing by when they are arrested. They are mentally ill, have problems with drug overdose and we release them early to no social services. ”
Tata said her program received letters from people in prison asking for help to connect with outside services, but by the time they could respond, the men were already out.
The outbreak of the prison began in late May, when the Department of Corrections transferred sick inmates from the California Institution for Men in Chino to San Quentin and other facilities.
Nearly 9,500 inmates were released from state prisons from July 1 to August 6; almost half were early releases, according to the Department of Corrections.
“We just don’t have this infrastructure in place,” said Sam Lewis, executive director of the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, a nonprofit based in Los Angeles. “This happened so fast and the successes were because many of the community-based organizations have done this with their own resources.”
His organization estimates that it costs $ 650 to transport one person to a home, including mileage, a meal, protective equipment, clothing and wages of workers. Private donors helped pay for it, but more state funding is now available, he said.
“This has been forever,” Tata said. “What this pandemic has done is highlight the shortcomings in the system.”
As of this week, nearly 9,000 California inmates have tested positive for the virus and more than 50 have died, according to the Department of Corrections. The 2,200 infected at San Quentin equate to more than two-thirds of its current population.
Prisoners are a uniquely dangerous place for the spread of the disease.
U.S. inmates test positive at more than five times the rate of the general public, according to a July co-author of the UCLA Law COVID-19 Behind Bars Data Project.
“You had people sitting ducks,” said Sharon Dolovich, a professor of law leading the data project. “You have a lot of vulnerable people who need to get out,” Dolovich said. “Then you have an underfunded and overworked reentry side.”
But ultimately, she said, the state had to stop the outbreak, even if it meant difficult days for reentry providers.
“When the house is on fire, you get people out,” Dolovich said, repeating a line she heard from a colleague. “You do not keep anyone in a burning house to wait for them somewhere to land.”
“When the house is on fire, you get people out.”
– Sharon Dolovich, UCLA Law COVID-19 Behind Bars Data Project
Former residents of a facility with an outbreak would need to be quarantined for two weeks, often in a hotel room, before moving to transitional housing or to the community.
“For reasons of public health, we are unable to place anyone who is COVID-19 positive or is identified as being exposed to a community reentry program,” said Dana Simas, a spokeswoman for the department. -post answers to questions.
The department relies on nonprofits and community organizations to deliver reentry programs and expands its contracts with them, Simas said. There is also state funding for the additional need for housing.
There has been some concern about the possibility that former residents could spread the virus through communities. But correctional department officials said they could not force former inmates to remain in quarantine. “CDCR is not authorized to mandate a quarantine as a special condition of parole because it does not relate to criminal conduct or future crime,” Simas said.
CalMatters reached out to public health departments in the 10 most populous counties in California about following previous residences. Half responded and said they had no indication of community outreach associated with the releases.
The state has been testing all prisoners since mid-July “no more than seven days before their release,” Simas said. “In addition to lab testing, we also conduct rapid COVID-19 testing for rapid response to an individual’s release.”
CalMatters spoke with two former inmates released just before these protocols went into effect. Both said they were not tested within a week of their release.
Chanthon Bun, who was released from San Quentin in July, is praying at a small shrine he created to honor two friends who died of COVID-19. Photo courtesy of Chanthon Bun
Chanthon Bun, 41, said he refused to test before coming out of San Quentin because he feared it could delay his release. The test page was so packed that if he did not have the virus, he was worried he would catch it while there.
Bun came out in July on his regular parole date. At the time, he said he had several days of symptoms of the virus, including fever and fever.
“Everyone in my San Quentin building had COVID,” Bun said.
Bun, a Cambodian refugee who was worried about being picked up by federal immigration authorities after his release, said he rejected the offer of a hotel room to quarantine and instead hop on a bus to San Francisco. There, he said he met with lawyers and his attorney who took him to get a coronavirus test – he was positive – and then to a church in Bay Area, where he was helped to recover.
“I really thought I was going to die,” he said. After weeks of 105-degree fever and breathing problems, he finally tested negative.
Another inmate, James Wortham, who spent 35 years behind bars, said if it were not for the nonprofit California Reentry Institute, he would have been lost after he came out. The institute helped him obtain a social security card and birth certificate and provided emotional support during the transition.
Wortham, 54, worked in the prison hospital but was only tested twice for the coronavirus, and the last negative test was more than two weeks before he was released in early July. “When I was gone, they did not test me at all,” he said.
Collette Carroll, executive director and president of the California Reentry Institute, said a parole officer would send one man to a reentry house. When she told him he was COVID positive, he was instead sent to quarantine in a hotel.
“There’s just so much confusion,” she said.
Local probation departments also oversee many of the people coming out of prisons. The Los Angeles County Probation Department oversaw 700 new people released last month as a result of jail time. In Contra Costa County, the Probation Department has received 38 rapid releases for oversight since July. The officers sometimes had to pick people up from prisons, possibly exposing the officers to the virus.
In early July, Scull moved to transition homes in the Bay Area so he could be closer to his sponsors for substance abuse, life coaches and employment networks.
But his freedom was recently curtailed again when the house went into quarantine for his own outbreak of the virus. Scull brought a unique perspective on the new shelter-in-place life of a pandemic.
“I’m used to being limited,” he said. “It’s not that big of me.”
###
CALmatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture that explains California policy and politics.
