Ceasar McDowell was released from San Quentin State Prison on June 26, his pre-scheduled release date — unrelated to the coronavirus — after serving a 20-year sentence on a three strikes violation.
The 46-year-old from Rialto, California spent his last four days in the prison’s COVID-19 ward, even though he had no symptoms and never received the results of the coronavirus test he had taken as a “just-in-case” measure, he said.
McDowell said those final days — sitting in a cell with men coughing all around him — were some of the most brutal of his entire incarceration.
McDowell’s family had driven all the way from Southern California and Oregon to see him walk out of the prison’s gates, and he planned to have a celebratory breakfast with them before they drove him to his transitional housing arrangement in Van Nuys, California.
But that morning, instead of being greeted by his family, McDowell was handcuffed, placed in a van and driven seven hours south to Corona, California where he would have to spend several weeks in mandatory quarantine at a hotel that prison officials were using to house inmates exposed to the virus.
“They stole that moment from my family,” McDowell said. “All those years your family waits to come pick you up — your mom, your grandma. It was all of them at the gate.”
After 11 days, McDowell was released from the hotel, where his brother came to pick him up. At no point during his ordeal did he receive his test results. Now, he has been left in the lurch, unsure if his transitional housing spot is even still available.
“Restricted movements and last-minute transportation plans can occur based upon COVID-19 testing and requests to participate in the program,” a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) official told KQED.
McDowell’s account offers a first look at the prisoner reentry process during the COVID-19 pandemic, as CDCR grapples with how to quickly release thousands of additional inmates into an under-resourced system.
Pressure to Release
Until late May, San Quentin had remained untouched by the coronavirus. That quickly changed when a group of 121 incarcerated people from the California Institution for Men in Chino were transferred to the Marin County facility without being tested immediately beforehand.
The subsequent outbreak inside the prison — of more than 2,000 cumulative positive cases, resulting in at least 12 deaths — sparked widespread outcry among inmates’ families, criminal justice advocates and state lawmakers, who held an oversight hearing on the situation in early July.
Two weeks ago, CDCR officials announced that as many as 8,000 people — about 7% of the state prison population — would be released from prisons across California by the end of August in order to slow the spread of the virus. Inmates with 180 days or less left on the sentences, serving nonviolent, non-sex offense crimes, would be prioritized, as would inmates over 65 with chronic conditions or respiratory illnesses like asthma, officials said
Though prisoner advocacy groups and health experts say the announcement is a step in the right direction, many doubt the likelihood CDCR will meet that target, and argue that far more inmates need to be released to effectively control the outbreak.
A study by public health experts at UC Berkeley and UCSF published in late-June recommended San Quentin cut its prison population by more than 50% in order to effectively quell the spread of the virus.
UC Berkeley public health professor Stefano Bertozzi, who co-authored the study, argues that nonviolent inmates with hypertension and diabetes should also be considered for early release
“They don't have to do their time now if they're not a danger to the community. And they're certainly a danger to themselves and to the community if they're in a prison where the transmission can happen so easily,” Bertozzi said, who hopes prison officials will consider more sweeping releases.
Risk Assessment
Some advocates also argue that CDCR’s policy to only consider releasing inmates without violent or sex crime convictions can lead to arbitrary decisions.
“For example, you can have a robbery from a Safeway, where someone is walking out with a box of donuts or something really low level and they get into a scuffle with a security guard and push him,” said Alameda County Public Defender Brendon Woods.
Some officials, he explained, might consider that a violent crime, while others might not, a decision that could potentially block many inmates from release who don’t pose any real threat of violence.
The established thresholds for release also create a paradoxical situation, said UC Hastings law professor Hadar Aviram, because inmates convicted of violent crimes often serve longer sentences and many have consequently grown old in prison, putting them at greater risk of transmission.
“These categories are ignoring the obvious,” she said, adding that many of these older inmates — regardless of what crime they committed long ago — are “pretty much the ideal population to release.”
“These are people, given everything that we know from criminology, who have aged out of crime,” she said. “They don't actually pose a risk to public safety.”