In 2009, Forbes put together a popular article on America’s “Cushiest Prisons.” Among them was the minimum security satellite camp at FCI Otisville (Otisville, NY), located 80 miles north of New York City.
The prison has temporarily housed many infamous minimum security, white-collar inmates from the New York area. Recently, that has included former New York State Senator Dean Skelos and President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen. Both Skelos and Cohen are currently serving their prison terms at home as a result of a directive of Attorney General Williams Barr’s directive to the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) on April 3, 2020 to increase the use of Home Confinement for those who were “vulnerable” to the Covid-19 virus and met certain requirements.
Skelos, 72 years old, is scheduled to complete his prison term August 20, 2022 but is completing his prison term on Home Confinement after testing positive for Covid-19. Cohen was released in late May and is currently home on a furlough that will likely turn into Home Confinement soon (Furloughs, temporary assignments to home, have typically been used to place inmates at home prior to being put on Home Confinement). Those two were released amid a Covid-19 outbreak at the camp that led to minimum security campers being moved into the adjacent medium security facility. Rather than living a life in an open dorm setting with no fence, minimum security inmates were locked in cells for 23 hours/day and allowed to shower 3-times each week. Cohen spent the last month of his confinement in Otisville in such a cell before being released. Now, Otisville camp has another Covid-19 outbreak.
Just before Cohen was released on furlough May 21, other camp inmates that were in quarantine were placed into the camp, ending what had been weeks of higher security, restricted living. While there was some disappointment that the inmates were not going to Home Confinement, all were relieved to be back in a camp security level.
Prison is not a good place to be but if one has to do time, few places are better than Otisville, NY. I spoke to Jack Donson who worked at Otisville for over 20 years as a case management specialist who told me, “Most men in the camp knew the rules and obeyed them so there was little friction.” Donson supervised a number of high profile inmates who were in Otisville. “The camp was a docile environment,” Donson said, “everyone was trying to get back home.” The same is true today but now a return of Covid-19 to Otisville has put both those infected and others in quarantine.
On June 12, an inmate who was going into a 14-day quarantine in advance of going to home confinement tested positive for Covid-19. As a precaution, they tested the remainder of the camp. The following Tuesday, June 16, a camp administrator informed the inmates in the camp that they had 15 minutes to get their things together for a move back to the FCI …. 18 inmates and 1 staff member tested positive. Those who were positive were placed in cells by themselves and those that were negative were bunked together in cells. The inmates had been out of the medium security FCI about a month before they were told to go back.
The reoccurrence of Covid-19 in Otisville is just an example of what is happening across the country. The BOP suspended visitation on March 13 to curtail the spread of the virus but numbers of newly infected inmates continued to climb until they maxed out in May at 3,379. The BOP was called out by the Washington Post for its limited use of testing to track Covid-19 spread but the agency claims that it has expanded testing even though numbers of new cases continues to trend down (not sure how that is happening as the total number of US cases continues to rise). Legal visits to inmates are also limited as are the ways that inmates communicate with their families. Many of those in prison, and their families, are under increased pressures from the situation … thus the request from Attorney General Barr.
Inmates typically communicate via phone and email through a system known as TRULINCS. There are limitations on the number of minutes each inmate is allowed to call home each month (300) and they are also responsible for the costs of the call which is funded through their commissary account. In April, the BOP expanded the number of minutes an inmate could call home to 500 and also allowed those calls to be placed at no charge. The move was intended to make up for the loss of visitation and keep inmates in touch with their families. However, moves like the ones in Otisville put inmates in locked cells with very limited access to phone banks and no access to email. Now, letters are arriving home from those locked up in Otisville and they tell a story of despair.
First, families are not notified that their loved ones have been placed in the higher security prison with limited access to phones. One person whose relative is in Otisville prison camp told me that the first indication that something is wrong is when the phone calls stop. “I called the prison and they don’t tell me anything,” the person told me. “The first time I was told was when I received a letter telling me the situation. Now I hear from him every few days but I don’t expect the phone calls until he is back at the camp and I have no idea when that will be.”
One person whose relative is locked up in prison shared with me that they believe that the lack of high profile inmates in the camp has hurt attention that they would have received otherwise had Cohen and Skelos remained. “Nobody cares about us now,” one inmate wrote home, “we still have no tissues, paper towels and the water they distribute in bottles is limited … the water dispensed from the faucet in the cell is not drinkable.” The person went on to write that the majority of those infected were non-symptomatic, so at least they were not, for the moment, battling fever and chills.
Prison is an awful place for anyone to be placed, but our society recognizes that “prison” is a justified punishment. Those who represent a minimal risk to society are allowed to serve their time in a facility commensurate to their threat to society. However, many minimum security inmates are finding themselves in higher security prisons where they are being warehoused as a means to control a virus. Many of these inmates could be released to Home Confinement. According to a New York Times
There is increased stress on inmates at every level of the BOP. However, for minimum security inmates, this has turned into a high security nightmare.
