Nebraska prisons head says 1 worker, no inmates infected
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Nebraska’s corrections department has taken aggressive, early steps to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus inside the state’s prisons, and so far the efforts appear to be working, the state corrections director said Friday amid growing safety concerns raised by prisoner advocates.
Director Scott Frakes said his agency has done an “exceptional job” of keeping inmates and staff members healthy.
He said one staff member had tested positive for the coronavirus as of Friday afternoon, and no other cases have shown up among the department’s 2,100 employees and 5,500 inmates. The staff member who tested positive has stayed isolated at home for 15 days, he said.
“We have done an exceptional job of keeping COVID-19 out of our prisons,” Frakes said at Gov. Pete Ricketts’ daily coronavirus news conference.
His comments came as a coalition of prisoner advocacy groups filed an emergency motion in a pending lawsuit to force the agency to release its pandemic prevention plan. The lawsuit, filed in 2017, argues that Nebraska’s prison overcrowding and staffing shortages are effectively depriving inmates of critical medical care.
Nebraska’s prisons have faced years of scrutiny from lawmakers, and the department has struggled to recruit and retain employees.
“COVID-19 presents a grave threat to people in Nebraska’s prisons, where extreme overcrowding and chronic under-staffing had already put the health and safety of everyone in these facilities at risk,” said David Fathi, a leader attorney on the case and director of the ACLU National Prison Project.
ACLU of Nebraska Legal Director Adam Sipple said the department’s refusal to provide its pandemic plan raises concerns about what exactly prison officials are doing.
“The Department of Correctional Services needs to demonstrate they are following the advice of public health officials,” Sipple said.
Nebraska had 635 confirmed cases and 15 deaths as of Friday afternoon, according to the state Department of Health and Human Services. More than 8,700 people have tested negative.
The state reported 57 new cases on Friday, up from 53 on Thursday and 48 on Wednesday.
At the news conference, Frakes said he doesn’t plan to release the department’s pandemic plan because doing so could anger inmates and reveal security information that would threaten safety in the prisons.
Frakes said the prisons suspended in-person visits to inmates and imposed tough new safety restrictions on all workers while taking steps to keep inmates separated when possible. He acknowledged that it’s difficult in some barracks-style areas for low-risk inmates, but said each inmate has been a mask to wear when they’re not lying or sitting on their beds.
He said prison officials began planning for the pandemic in early March and quickly restricted visitors’ access to the facilities.
He acknowledged that prison officials are only testing inmates who show symptoms of the virus, and employees who think they may have it are told to consult their own doctors.
The department has also changed the way it trains new hires to minimize physical contact among them, Frakes said. He said the department has seen an uptick in job applications, largely due to a surge in layoffs from private businesses that cut back because of the outbreak.
Meanwhile, state officials said the latest coronavirus death on Thursday was an Omaha-area woman in her 60s with underlying health conditions.
The Department of Health and Human Services also reported that Burt County in northeastern Nebraska and Polk County in east-central Nebraska both reported their first cases of the virus on Thursday.
For most people, the new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia, and death.
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Margery A. Beck reported from Omaha
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