By Nora Mishanec
San Francisco Chronicle
SAN FRANCISCO — As coronavirus cases soar in California prisons, officials at San Quentin State Prison on Monday began a series of mandatory transfers that have proceeded against the advice of the prison’s own medical personnel, according to prison doctors.
In some cases, the transfers are occurring over the objections of the incarcerated people and their lawyers, according to the attorneys.
The Office of the State Public Defender opposed the “plan to involuntarily transfer nearly 300 men from San Quentin to other California prisons” in a letter sent to Gov. Gavin Newsom last week. The inmates, who were identified as medically vulnerable, were told they would be moved to other prison facilities, including one Central Valley prison, located in Corcoran (Kings County).
Those who refused the move had to sign a waiver accepting liability for injury or death if they chose to remain at San Quentin and contracted the virus, according to documents reviewed by The Chronicle.
Some doctors and nurses on San Quentin’s medical staff resisted the mandatory transfers, labeling them hasty, ill-advised and fraught with risk.
“It felt weird and poorly thought through,” said Dr. George Beatty, a physician at San Quentin who has treated hundreds of COVID-19 patients at the prison. “Most of us were like, ‘We don’t want anything to do with it.’”
Coronavirus cases in California prisons have tripled in the past month, mirroring the surge in cases threatening to overwhelm health care facilities statewide. More than 9,000 incarcerated people tested positive in the past two weeks. San Quentin, by contrast, has recorded just four new cases in that same time period.
“We think it’s a fairly low-risk place,” he said. “Most of the institutions they’re considering transferring to have higher prevalence” of coronavirus.
Beatty was not alone in expressing his concern. The planned transfers alarmed many people in custody at San Quentin and their advocates, who noted that a botched transfer from Chino is what ignited the deadly outbreak at San Quentin that killed 28 inmates, the most of any facility statewide. A group of public defenders and other attorneys representing many of those incarcerated at the prison wrote a joint letter to Newsom protesting their lack of involvement in the transfers that they say threaten public health amid the spiraling crisis statewide.
Newsom’s office did not reply to a request for comment.
Officials with the California Correctional Health Care Services, tasked with overseeing the transfers, said San Quentin inmates may appeal the moves. Antibody testing has been offered, and anyone who tests positive for antibodies will not be subject to transfer, said corrections spokeswoman Elizabeth Gransee.
“Every safety precaution will be taken on any patient movement, including testing before and after any moves, quarantining upon arrival at the new housing location and sanitation of all housing spaces prior to any movement,” Gransee said.
But some inmates do not trust a system that has failed to control ballooning case counts in the past. Earl Orr is among those set to be transferred to the state prison at Corcoran, some 200 miles south in the Central Valley. The prison, which has seen 42 new cases in the past two weeks, is located in a region that has already come close to running out of ICU beds.
For nine months, Orr, 64, and other residents of a cell block known as Unit H managed to escape infection as coronavirus ravaged nearly every other corner of San Quentin. He does not want to be bused to Corcoran, he said, away from the facility that has been his home for four years and the nieces who used to visit him before the pandemic hit.
“It’s like jumping out of the frying pan, into the fire,” he said. “Right now I’m in a frying pan on low heat. And they want to take me and put me into the fire. They’re endangering me. It’s not right.”
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