State report details how botched inmate transfers sparked public health disaster at San Quentin
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Prison officials sparked a “public health disaster” with botched transfers, the Office of Inspector General said.Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle 2019Show MoreShow Less
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San Quentin State Prison in San Quentin, Calif., on Monday, December 14, 2020. California prison officials and medical staff sparked a “public health disaster” with their botched handling of prisoner transfers to San Quentin and Corcoran state prisons last year, the state’s Office of Inspector General said in a blistering report Monday.Scott Strazzante / The ChronicleShow MoreShow Less
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San Quentin State Prison in San Quentin, Calif., on Monday, December 14, 2020. California prison officials and medical staff sparked a “public health disaster” with their botched handling of prisoner transfers to San Quentin and Corcoran state prisons last year, the state’s Office of
California corrections officials ignored the warnings of frontline health workers and pressured them to hastily transfer 189 potentially coronavirus-infected inmates from a Chino men’s prison last May, triggering a deadly
Inspector General: California prison transfers during coronavirus caused public health disaster at San Quentin
By Lisa Fernandez
California prisons created public health disaster with transfers, the Office of the Inspector General said.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. - The Office of the Inspector General, which is the independent oversight body over the California prison system, issued a scathing report Monday on how officials handled coronavirus transfers, saying that the preparation and execution of the transfers were deeply flawed and risked the health and lives of thousands of incarcerated persons and staff.
In fact, the OIG went a step further, saying that the California Correctional Health Care Services and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation caused a public health disaster at San Quentin when they transferred medically vulnerable incarcerated people from the California Institute for Men in Chino to the Marin County prison without taking the proper safegua
But NBC 7 found at least two San Diego County cases where people had been held for decades on offenses that were not legally qualifying for the program.
According to the District Attorney’s office, Rance E. Winters, 62, was committed to the MDO program back in 1999 after pleading guilty to starting a grass fire with paint thinner two years earlier and having his parole revoked. The California Board of Parole Hearings approved Winters’ commitment to the MDO program.
Winters’ offense unlawfully starting a fire or penal code 452(c) is not a legally qualifying offense for confinement past an offender’s release date under the MDO law. And now, the DA’s office said it has “notified Mr. Winters attorney in the Public Defender s Office so steps can be taken to end Mr. Winters participation in the MDO program.”