Today, the ACLU and ACLU-WV filed public records requests with the West Virginia Department of Corrections and the Trump administration that seek information on what the Bureau of Prisons and Governors and Department of Corrections knew about the potentially catastrophic impacts of COVID-19 on their prisons and the communities surrounding them.
The records request follows the release of a first-of-its-kind epidemiological model that shows that as many as 200,000 people could die from COVID-19 — double the government estimate — if the federal government and states fail to release people from jails as part of the public health efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19. To date there has been one infection and no deaths in West Virginia correctional facilities, according to officials. In response to the ACLU model, a Trump administration spokesperson refused to comment. The ACLU is now filing these FOIA requests to find out what the administration knew and when it knew it, as COVID-19 has begun to infect and kill people incarcerated in and working in federal and state prisons and jails as well as the surrounding communities.
We are seeking records that will:
- Expose whether and when West Virginia officials first understood the magnitude of the risk that COVID-19 posed to people living and working in state and federal prisons and the surrounding communities;
- Reveal whether models relied upon by officials were fundamentally flawed by failing to account for the magnifying effect that prisons have on the spread of COVID-19 inside and outside detention facilities.
- Seek copies of any recommendations made to prevent COVID-19 spread to see what was ignored;
- Discover communications, including emails, among senior officials as the first infections and deaths occurred within jails and prisons;
- Uncover first-hand complaints and grievances made directly by the staff and people incarcerated in West Virginia who had prior knowledge of the horrifying lack of planning, hygiene, and care inside federal prisons as the COVID-19 pandemic hit.