As COVID-19 continues to spread across the nation, it's now hitting our inmate populations and staff members of the Department of Corrections.
Going forward, the department is taking steps to maximize their current efforts and are trying to send inmates who have served more than their minimum sentence home.
"Early on we established a list and our number at that time was around 12,000 individuals whose medical conditions would make them on our vulnerable list for COVID," Department of Corrections Secretary John Wetzel said.
There are approximately 44,500 inmates in state facilities, according to the Department of Corrections.
"Crisis management is focusing on what your resources are and making sure you're getting a return on investment on resources for it," Wetzel said. "Maximize the heck out of the parole process. Keep those hearings going. Maximize everything we have."
Staff members have been wearing masks for two weeks. Inmates sharing a 100 sq. ft. cell with another individual are still being directed to lesser populated areas in the prison during their time out of the cell. New inmates are being separated from the general population during a quarantine process based off CDC protocol.
The department says they have testing protocols at all of their prisons.
Furthermore, they're attempting to overcome challenges for those they release early. Inmates are being registered for health care before they leave incarceration. Other community infrastructure is being created.
"We're creating our own transportation network so we can transport releases back to their area," Wetzel said. Furthermore, "There has to be a place to them to live, either at home or a halfway house. Medical continuity. We have to make sure we have at least a month of more of medication and obviously a nexus to continue health care and treatment needs."
But, the department wants to assure the public they have this under control. Every year, they deal with some sort of influenza outbreak and more in their populations.
"The level of contagion is more with this, so it's slightly different. But, we've been through this before," Wetzel said. "The vast majority of our tests are negative--2 positive cases out of 44,500."
For more information on the department and what they're doing to mitigate the COVID-19 crisis in the state prison population, visit the DOC website.