Judge Orders Danbury’s FCI to Speed Up Inmate Releases

A U.S District Court judge has ordered FCI officials to fast-track prisoner releases.

According to WNPR.org, U.S District Court judge, Michael P. Shea has admonished FCI officials for dragging their feet with regards to releasing prisoners for home confinement to help stop the spread of the COVID-19.

According to the New Haven Register, a class-action lawsuit had been filed by four FCI inmates. claiming officials at FCI are making only "limited use of their home confinement authority." After hearing the lawsuit, Judge Shea explained,

The failures of FCI officials amount to deliberate indifference to a substantial risk of serious harm to inmates in violation to the Eighth Amendment.

Danbury's FCI houses approximately 1,000 inmates, and according to the Bureau of Prisons,(BOP) 75 inmates and 57 staff have come down with the virus. The four inmates that filed the lawsuit all have health conditions that make them more susceptible to developing serious complications if they were to acquire the infection in prison.

I happened to come across a website called the Prison Policy Initiative (prisonpolicy.org) that claims to expose the "broader harm of mass criminalization." Allow me to enlighten you with some of the website's stats as of May 14.

** The U.S. locks up more people per capita than any other nation. There are currently 2.3 million people incarcerated in this country.

** State prisons have been notorious for releasing the least amount of COVID-19 susceptible prisoners, but they now seem to be coming around.

** State prisons are still largely unprepared for a global pandemic.

** Oklahoma has the highest incarceration rate in the country.

** 70% of convictions in the U.S. lead to incarceration, which is far more than any other developed country in the world.

If you choose to dig deeper into this fascinating website that contains almost every known fact about prisons, prison reform, along with charts and graphs, click on, prisonpolicy.org.