California Attorney General Xavier Becerra has appealed a ruling that would force San Quentin State Prison officials to cut the incarcerated population by 50% to prevent further outbreaks of COVID-19.
An Oct. 20 decision by the First District Court of Appeals found that San Quentin’s warden and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation acted with deliberate indifference to the health of inmates by failing to reduce the population as recommended by a team of medical experts who toured the prison in June as the coronavirus began to sweep through the incarcerated population.
But in a petition to the California Supreme Court late Monday, Becerra’s office argued that “the appellate court too narrowly focused on one proposed COVID-reduction strategy” of “immediate mass decarceration” to the exclusion of other measures for slowing the spread of the virus.
The petition stated that those strategies, including erecting tents and converting gyms and other space at San Quentin into housing to allow greater social distancing and isolation of infected inmates, were recommended by the federal receiver in charge of medical care.
More than 2,500 inmates and staff at San Quentin have tested positive for the coronavirus and 29 have died since the beginning of the pandemic.