LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) - Lansing inmate Michael Yardley’s sense of taste and smell has faded, a tell-tale sign of the coronavirus that’s infected 551 of his fellow prisoners and killed three.
“I feel like I’m in a tomb,” the 42-year-old said during a phone call Tuesday.
Kansas prisons have been under stress from years of understaffing, rising inmate populations and riots. Talk of overhauling the state’s criminal justice system and releasing large numbers of low-level offenders remains just that.
In a few short weeks, COVID-19 has only kindled those long-term problems, overwhelming Lansing Correctional Facility. Dozens of employees have tested positive for the coronavirus, compounding a staff shortage that has left jobs vacant for years.
Over the past month, disturbances have rocked Lansing, Ellsworth Correctional Facility and the state’s juvenile correctional facility, representing the most serious inmate unrest in more than a year.
Additionally, the debate among state leaders over prison reform is now at a boil as demands increase to let out some of the 9,700 people currently incarcerated, The Wichita Eagle reports.
As coronavirus cases in Lansing mounted, Gov. Laura Kelly promised her administration would announce the early release of some inmates. The Democrat has long said the state is holding too many non-violent offenders.
But after testing revealed that 75 percent of inmates in one Lansing unit had the virus, Kelly said her administration was “rethinking” early releases. Just six inmates across the state - and none from Lansing - have been let out and put on house arrest.
“We have to make sure we’re not putting people who are infected into our communities,” Kelly told The Kansas City Star’s editorial board last week. Across the prison system, at least 652 staff and inmates have tested positive for coronavirus. The vast majority are in Lansing.
Defense attorneys and advocates on Monday condemned what they called Kelly’s failure to act, charging that it has led to infection and chaos.
“That is not leadership,” the directors of the Kansas Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the Kansas Board of Indigents’ Services, the Midwest Innocence Project and the Kansas federal public defender and said in a joint statement.
Calls for inmate releases have only intensified. The American Civil Liberties Union is suing to improve conditions for inmates and seeking the release of others, alleging violations of constitutional rights protecting against cruel and unusual punishment. Some legislators are also pressuring Kelly to act.
“I am very frustrated,” Sen. David Haley, a Kansas City Democrat, said.
“There is no reason to submit to a potential life-threatening or death sentence” for inmates in prison for a “minor amount of time,” Haley said.
Lansing Correctional Facility was supposed to be the gleaming new gem of the state prison system.
Although the prison, situated on 142 acres, is the state’s oldest, a massive overhaul of the campus was slated to end in the opening of a new, state-of-the-art building.
Instead, it’s become the site of one of the largest COVID-19 clusters in Kansas.
As of Tuesday, at least 551 of about 1,700 inmates have tested positive, said Rebecca Witte, a spokeswoman for the Kansas Department of Corrections. Five are currently hospitalized.
Officials were expected to have finished testing the prison’s entire population by the end of the week, Witte said. A Tuesday memo from Corrections Secretary Jeff Zmuda to inmates said roughly 50 percent of the population is testing positive but with no symptoms.
While many of the cases appear mild, the prison clearly failed to prevent a widespread outbreak.
Yardley, who will be in prison until at least 2027 for first-degree murder, burglary and aggravated robbery, has called Lansing home for more than a decade. He described a chaotic move to the new building last month that left him without his property - including face masks and soap - for five days.
“I couldn’t get any hygiene kits, I couldn’t get a shower, clean clothes,” Yardley said.
He said he was tested on Sunday and told his results could be available within 48 hours.
Health experts have urged frequent, vigorous handwashing to prevent contracting the virus, especially from touching surfaces. But several inmates have said getting soap takes cash.
The ACLU alleges in its lawsuit over the state’s coronavirus prison response that prison officials are limiting access to soap to those who can afford it. Monica Burch, an inmate at Ellsworth Correctional Facility, said in an affidavit that non-indigent inmates are only able to obtain soap through the commissary.
“We know we must wash our hands often … but our circumstances at Ellsworth (Correctional Facility) make it difficult to do so,” Burch wrote in the affidavit, signed April 16.
Lansing inmate David Brooks made a similar statement in an April 7 affidavit as part of the lawsuit. He wrote that inmates don’t get soap unless they pay for soap through the commissary. The only exception is for individuals who make less than $12 a month.
Witte said “everyone has access to free soap.” Soap is located at every handwashing station, along with paper towels, she said.
“There are folks who don’t care for the soap that we issue and in that case, they are welcome to order something to their liking from the canteen,” Witte said.
David Carter, a sergeant who worked at Lansing for more than 15 years, resigned last week when he said he realized the problems at Lansing would not go away when the pandemic did. He made the decision after spending one day working in the prison’s new set of buildings.
Carter said his decision was spurred by the department’s response to COVID-19. Definitive action was only taken after an April 9 riot over healthcare issues forced their hand, he said.
A YouTube video purportedly of the incident showed an inmate claiming “they aren’t giving us no healthcare for this coronavirus.”
“The facility was reactive, not proactive,” Carter said.
Lansing’s frustrating work environment is reflected in the number of staff vacancies.
Lansing had 268 vacant positions as of April 27. It is the only prison that continues to have significant staff shortages.
In addition, more than 90 employees aren’t currently on the job, either because they have coronavirus, have family members that do or for other pandemic-related reasons.
Nine Lansing employees quit in April, Witte said, though she said the number is about average.
Witte said the Kansas Department of Corrections is providing Lansing employees who are working a $400 cash award each pay period. She said the program could be extended to other prisons if they turn into hot spots.
Ten National Guard members, including doctors, are at the prison to assist the staff, and several of the other prisons have each sent a handful of employees to help. Some employees are also logging overtime.
“We’ve put some things in place that have certainly helped, but depending on how this continues to go, we may obviously need to take further steps,” Witte said. “I don’t know what those further steps are just yet, but more work may be needed there.”
Before the pandemic, Kansas had been gearing up for a sweeping debate over criminal justice reform. During her State of the State address in January, Kelly said the groundwork had been laid for a “serious discussion” of possible changes.
By 2029, Kansas will have 11,428 inmates — 982 above its current prison capacity — according to official projections. Kelly is taking some steps to buy time.
Officials last fall sent 120 inmates to a private prison operated by CoreCivic in Arizona to relieve overcrowding. CoreCivic has a checkered record and the move was controversial, but helped ease crowding issues. Kelly has also outlined plans to retrofit an unused building near the Winfield Correctional Facility to house elderly inmates.
A broad overhaul of criminal justice system that ultimately keeps more people out of prison is expected to take years. But the pandemic is forcing Kelly to immediately confront high-stakes choices over releasing some inmates.
More than 4,000 inmates have less than two years to serve in their sentence. Of those, about 1,230 are 50 and older, putting them at greater risk if they catch the virus. Yet Kansas has placed just six inmates on house arrest.
Under state law, only inmates from minimum security institutions are eligible for house arrest, Witte said. Those with high-end felonies are excluded.
Asked if the six inmates were the only ones who qualified for house arrest, Witte responded yes, “as of right now.” She added that officials looked at additional criteria, including participation in programming and making sure individuals had a place to go if they were released.
Kelly last week suggested that releases had been halted because of how far the virus had spread through Lansing. None of the inmates released were from the prison.
Releasing inmates requires jumping through legal hoops, the governor said.
“While we were jumping through those hoops, we got caught up with the outbreak in Lansing,” Kelly said. “If you look at it that way, you can say ‘yes, we waited too late,’ but it wasn’t like we weren’t trying.”
Communities are already affected by corrections officers moving in and out of the prison everyday, said Jacob Kang-Brown, a senior research associate at the Vera Institute of Justice, a New York-based justice reform group.
He contends a strong case still exists for releasing inmates.
“So reducing the spread, even if there’s already quite a bit in a particular facility, by releasing as many people as you can now, I think will save lives, both in and outside the prison,” Kang-Brown said.
Rep. J.R. Claeys, a Salina Republican, said across the state, opportunities exist on a case-by-case basis to show compassion toward inmates and recognize someone has “learned a valuable lesson and isn’t going to commit a crime again.”
The coronavirus may force the state’s hand in releasing inmates, but he suggested that regardless of the pandemic, the state should be examining sentencing and imprisonment.
“I don’t know that we shouldn’t have been thinking about it anyway,” Claeys said.
Ultimately, most people in prison will eventually be released one way or another, said Yardley, the Lansing inmate. What happens while they’re behind bars will affect what happens once they’re out.
“How you treat the people in your prisons is how your community is going to be,” he said.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.