Virus alarms ring again for Cook’s inmates

Despite county slowing first wave, virus surges in jails

“Detention centers are by and large terrible places for children. Educational outcomes are terrible. Given the experience of what happens inside these facilities I think it is naïve to say the children are more safe inside than they are at home. ... To take away their support system, what chance do they have to get better?”

— Joshua Rovner, senior advocacy associate at The Sentencing Project, which promotes criminal justice reform

The renewed nationwide surge of COVID-19 has hit Cook County lockups with force this fall, causing officials to reevaluate the safeguards put in place earlier this year to blunt the spread of the deadly infection behind bars.

More than 20 residents of the Juvenile Temporary Detention Center have tested positive in the past month, a dramatic increase over the numbers reported at the end of spring and early summer. The staff numbers are alarming as well, with more than 70 people who work at the near West Side facility now reported to have tested positive during the entire pandemic.

“It is just shocking,” Deputy Cook County Public Defender Peter Parry said Wednesday, adding that people working in and around the facility were “very concerned.”

The numbers at Cook County Jail, where thousands of adult detainees are housed, have spiked too. Over the summer, the number of positive cases were in the double digits, but as of Thursday, 153 detainees had tested positive, according to the Cook County sheriff’s office. Three had been hospitalized.

The first death of a COVID-19-positive patient since May was reported this week when an 85-year-old detainee died after being transported to Stroger Hospital.

And the jail’s population has risen significantly since efforts in the spring to release detainees to allow for social distancing. There were 5,529 people in custody Thursday — nearly back to pre-pandemic levels.

From the start, congregate settings like jails and prisons have posed a special concern for officials who had to both contain outbreaks within their walls and also monitor the constant churn of newly admitted detainees for signs of the virus.

Officials called meetings last week to decide how to respond, and Cook County state’s attorneys and public defenders are already meeting to see if they can, once again, work to expedite releases of detainees.

Fall surge among juveniles

The reports of juvenile detainees testing positive started trickling in over the past fewweeks.

So far in November, 16 have had a positive test — the same amount for all of April and May combined, according to figures provided by the office of Chief Judge Timothy Evans.

As of Friday, Evans’ office reported that 62 residents and 73 staff members had tested positive for the virus over the course of the entire pandemic.

Of those 62 residents, most were newly admitted youths who are kept away from general population for their first two weeks in detention as a precaution. But 25 were in the general population.

A daily breakdown of where the virus is detected is important, Parry said, to understanding how risky the situation is getting for residents, staff assigned to the building and court officers who handle juvenile cases.

Because youth are tested and quarantined, if needed, at intake, Parry said he is more concerned about kids testing positive in the general population.

Parry said public defender staff planned to meet with Evans’ office to get a breakdown so they can instruct public defenders on whether they need to push harder to release kids, as they had in the spring when the pandemic started.

“I don’t know if we need to return to the idea of these mass (releases),” he said. “We will ifwe have to.”

As of this month, 157 youth were detained, down from an average 221 in early March.

Early complaints that Juvenile Division Presiding Judge Michael Toomin was inappropriately blocking releases were assuaged after Evans stepped in. Though progressive juvenile advocates launched an extensive campaign to kick Toomin off the bench this fall, he barely cleared the 60% of votes necessary to keep his seat.

When defense attorneys want to release youths, they can face opposition from prosecutors, and ultimately it is the judge who decides.

A statement from the Cook County state’s attorney’s office called the recent increase in COVID numbers at the detention center concerning, and said they would continue to “consider all juvenile cases individually when asking the court to hold a minor in custody— based on the facts of the case which indicate whether the minor is a danger to the community or likely to flee the jurisdiction of the court.”

A lower population at the juvenile center has meant that achieving social distancing is less of a worry, when it comes to the spread of the virus.

But that distancing is a major concern for advocates, who say this kind of isolation from others is damaging to youths who are already showing signs of distress. In addition, most programming has gone virtual, meaning children do not get face-to-face visits with their parents.

“Detention centers are by and large terrible places for children,” said Joshua Rovner, senior advocacy associate at The Sentencing Project, which promotes criminal justice reform. “Educational outcomes are terrible. Given the experience of what happens inside these facilities I think it is naïve to say the children are more safe inside than they are at home. ... To take away their support system, what chance do they have to get better?”

Alarms at the jail

When the pandemic started making its way through Cook County Jail in the spring, several efforts launched to knock it back from troublesome levels that drew national attention.

While judges are meant to set bail in part to ensure public safety — keeping potentially dangerous defendants behind bars — the pandemic changed those calculations. With the jail emerging as a potential public-health threat, safety precautions suddenly required amuch emptier jail.

Cook County Public Defender Amy Campanelli’s office worked with Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx to prioritize the large-scale releases with a flurry of coordinated filings that were expedited. Though court operations had shut down, Evans opened two courtrooms dedicated to handling the requests.

Release efforts got the jail’s numbers to historic lows.

At the same time, Sheriff Tom Dart and Dr. Connie Mennella, who oversees medical care at the jail, created safety and testing protocols that included single cells for detainees, and opening long- shuttered buildings and the county boot camp to create more housing options and space for medical care. Officials shut down most programming and created mandatory quarantines for newly arrived detainees, whowere tested upon entry.

Civil rights attorneys also filed a federal lawsuit to ensure proper safety protection swere in place.

In July, a paper authored by medical officials fromthe Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and various county and city offices concluded the jail had successfully beat back its outbreak of COVID-19 even as the virus spread dramatically outside its walls.

But some four months later, the situation has shifted significantly, officials said.

Along with a new spike in cases there, the test positivity rate at the jail jumped from 2.97% to 6.7% over the past week, a level that alarmed many even though it iswell belowthe citywide rate in Chicago.

Campanelli and Foxx are once again working on coordinated releases, according to both offices. Campanelli said she is also looking for cases that can be resolved quickly, perhaps with a plea.

On Monday, Evans’ office said that in light of the recent uptick in COVID-19 cases, his office formalized the review process by ordering defense lawyers and prosecutors to review their cases and see whether releases are appropriate.

Foxx’s office also acknowledged the delicate balance she and others must strike as they weigh whom to release, saying they are seeking to “identify detainees within the current jail population who pose a low risk to public safety and could be released on bail, often with conditions such as electronic monitoring or curfew.”

“We are working as quickly as we can to be thoughtful in this process,” the statement read.

Meanwhile, the jail has suspended in-person visits, which had been reinstituted at the start of summer when the numbers dropped. The boot camp area has since reopened as isolation housing, with 24-hour medical care.

But jail officials told the Tribune that some safety measures, such as keeping to one detainee per cell, are impossible as the population climbs. In June, more than 60% of detainees were “single- celled,” but this month itwas about 44%.

The state of Illinois has also once again suspended transfers from local jails to safeguard its own corrections system, which also happened in the spring. Currently, there are more than 300 detainees in Cook County Jail who otherwise would have been transferred, officials said.

With numbers on the rise, critics have begun making renewed calls for bond reform to thin the jail’s numbers. Medical experts have repeatedly said whe nit comes to the jail and the coronavirus, population density is the enemy.

Campanelli agreed it’s time for significant steps to be taken, noting the loss of the detainee last week, who was one of her office’s clients.

“This is a crisis,” she said.