COVID Decarceration Timeline

Forward Justice and other Social Justice organizations sent advocacy letters to NC officials urging them to take steps to reduce and protect the incarcerated population as the outbreak intensifies.

Read the press release here

A male in his 60’s at the minimum custody unit of the Caledonia Correctional Complex in Tillery, NC started exhibiting symptoms and was immediately quarantined, according to state officials.

Learn more here

Image Source: www.ncdps.gov

Forward Justice partnered with Color of Change to launch a petition calling for Governor Cooper and Secretary Hooks to take immediate action to stop the spread of covid 19 in NC jails and prisons. To date, nearly 1,400 people have signed.

Forward justice leads a Twitter storm calling on Gov. Cooper to take immediate action to stop the spread of COVID-19 in NC jails and prisons.

The 60 year old man in Caledonia Correctional Complex in Tillery tested positive for Covid-19, marking the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in an NC facility.

Source

Forward Justice launched our ‘Voices from the Inside’ storytelling campaign focused on uplifting the voices, stories and experiences of people who are incarcerated during this pandemic.

View the stories here

Forward Justice, ACLU of North Carolina, Disability Rights North Carolina, Emancipate NC, and the National Juvenile Justice Network filed a lawsuit seeking emergency action to prevent the deadly spread of COVID-19 in the state’s prisons by reducing the number of people who are incarcerated in state facilities.

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The first incarcerated person dies during a COVID-19 outbreak at the Butner federal prison in NC.
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Image Source: Gerry Broome/Associated Press

3 more people incarcerated at the Butner federal prison in NC die from COVID-19 complications, 82 cases are reported across the prison complex.

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259 people being held in Neuse Correctional Institution in Goldsboro, NC tested Positive for COVID-19. An exponential increase from the 19 positive cases reported two days prior, on April 14th.

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Image source: Mount Olive Tribune

Forward Justice Co-Director, Daryl Atkinson, and Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II penned a joint op-ed on the Moral and Legal Case for Emptying NC Prisons.

Read the op-ed here

281 people being held at Neuse Correctional facility in Goldsboro, NC tested positive for COVID-19 after the state was ordered to conduct testing of each person being held in every NC facility

Read article here

It was documented that more than 450 of 770 incarcerated people at Neuse had tested positive for the virus, making this one of the worst prison outbreaks in the country.

Read article here.

After the North Carolina Supreme Court denied a petition to take up the case, we filed a complaint for declaratory and injunctive relief and a petition for writ of mandamus in Wake County Superior Court to ensure that Governor Cooper and other public officials take action to stop the spread of COVID-19 in North Carolina prisons.

We held a mass calling action for people to contact Governor Cooper and other NC officials and urge them to take immediate action to stop the spread of covid 19 in jails and prisons.

Forward Justice and our community partners started the “Free Our Neighbors Car Rally” A socially-distanced, rolling car protest in front of the Durham, NC jail encouraging Sheriff Birkhead to take immediate action to stop the spread of covid in their facility. The protests persisted for 6 weeks.

Forward Justice launched the #FreeThemAll Art Activism Campaign encouraging people to use their creativity to create a work of art telling NC Gov Roy Cooper to #StopCOVID19inPrisons and share their art on social media.

Forward justice and co-counsel had a requested hearing with Judge Rozier seeking a Temporary Restraining Order against the state ordering a more robust plan with a faster release schedule to reduce the incarcerated population in North Carolina.

As of this date, 596 incarcerated people had tested positive for COVID-19, and 1,143 tests had been performed, a 52% positivity rate, and there had been two reported deaths of incarcerated people related to the virus.

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Court decision/ruling

Judge Rozier ordered NC officials to provide additional information such as each prisons access to PPE, social distancing practices, living conditions as well as a verified statement of those facilities’ ability to suitably prevent the spread of Covid-19, or in the alternative, a detailed plan to diminish it’s spread. https://carolinap

Superior Court Judge Vincent Rozier ordered N.C. officials to take additional action to stop the spread of COVID-19 in state prisons. The order forced the state to stop most transfers of incarcerated people and to develop a plan by the end of June to test everyone incarcerated in NC prisons.

As of this date, 5 incarcerated people in state prisons and one prison staff person had died of COVID-19.

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Judge Rozier ruled in our favor, granting a preliminary injunction in the lawsuit and ordered that immediate action be taken to stop the spread of COVID-19 in North Carolina Prisons.

The judge found that the State displayed three forms of deliberate indifference in the way they have handled the outbreak so far. As a result, the State has been ordered to take several corrective actions including:

The court also appointed a special liaison to the case to assist with communication, advisement and compliance.

Learn more here

Judge Rozier ruled that NC prisons are out of compliance with his previous court orders saying that the “state has failed to comply with the Court’s directions in several meaningful ways,” and that the court “is extremely concerned by the apparent indifference with which Defendants have treated the Court’s Orders.” He further found that The state “willfully failed” to provide certain information to the court, and that what the state did provide was inconsistent, incomplete and potentially incorrect.

Rozier ordered the state to provide evidence to show it is following the court’s order, due by July 27, including a detailed plan on preventing the spread of COVID-19, the state’s plan for early release from prison and protecting new intakes to the prison system. Judge Rozier also announced he would appoint a court liaison to monitor the accuracy of information submitted to the court, to be paid for by the state.

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Forward Justice and other Co-Counsel in the case notified the Wake County Superior Court that the state of North Carolina is not meeting its obligations under the Court’s orders.

As of this date, at least ten people have died from COVID-19 while incarcerated in North Carolina state prisons, and over 1,500 others have been infected with the disease.

Large-scale outbreaks resulting in the spread of hundreds of cases had already swept through at least four North Carolina state prisons. A hearing in the matter was scheduled for Friday, August 28, 2020.

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The North Carolina Vigil for Freedom and Racial Justice (‘Decarcerate Now’) started. Each day, from sunrise to sunset, a small, regularly-rotating group of people and organizations stood vigil at the Governor’s mansion, making the primary demand that he use his clemency power and all other means to decarcerate immediately to protect against the spread of COVID-19 inside NC prisons.

Learn more about the movement here

Image Source: NC Vigil for Freedom and Racial Justice (@DecarcerateNowNC)

Judge Rozier ordered Defendants to begin providing weekly staff testing reports to the court and Plaintiffs.

Tom Maher, the former executive director of Duke Law’s Wilson Center for Science & Justice, was appointed as Special Master for the case to oversee parts of the NC prison system’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and make sure it is in compliance with court orders.

According to the DPS website, there are 6,493 positive tests (17.6%) in North Carolina prisons, which is far above the 11% positive test rate amongst the state’s overall population. To date, 26 people incarcerated in our state’s prisons have died from COVID-19. (data as of 12/11 3:00pm EST)

Source: NCDPS.gov

The Warden of Tabor Correctional died due to Covid-19. The Associate Warden of the facility died on December 24th due to complications from COVID-19.

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Image Source: WECT News 6

A man incarcerated at Alexander Correctional in Taylorsville, NC died from “complications from Covid-19”.

Image Source: NC DPS

‘Decarcerate Now’ vigil ended and a short documentary on the effort was released.

Watch the documentary here

Three more deaths were reported from Rutherford, Neuse and Alexander

Expert Homer Vinters toured and inspected the Pender, Craven, Central and NCCIW facilities. Dr. Venters was able to listen to the stories of numerous incarcerated people in efforts to further investigate the impact that DPS’s policies and lack of medical care have had on at-risk populations and on facilities overall.

Another death reported from Rutherford Correctional Institute

An Outbreak of covid 19 was reported at Wake Correctional

Read the article here

Three Covid-19 deaths reported. One from Neuse, Alexander and Rutherford Correctional.

We received a report of an outbreak at a facility that did not take appropriate measures to adequately isolate people who tested positive. Instead of following protocol, they were merely separated off by a piece of plastic placed over the bars attached via zip ties, causing major hysteria for the rest of those in the facility.

The 47th person who is incarcerated in NC died from Covid-19 at Nash Correctional