Like elsewhere in the state, COVID-19 isn’t over inside Oregon’s prisons.
Amid a growing outbreak at Coffee Creek Intake Center and pending lawsuits regarding the Oregon Department of Corrections response to COVID-19 at both individual prisons and system-wide, Street Roots found unexplained inconsistencies in the corrections department online COVID-19 dashboard — the only substantive publicly available data regarding COVID-19 in Oregon’s prisons.
As previously reported by Street Roots, the corrections department refused to disclose routine COVID-19 procedures, such as frequency of testing, how facilities responded to outbreaks and whether it would change any policies to mitigate further deaths, citing pending litigation.
Data questions The corrections department online COVID-19 dashboard hosts information including the current number of prisoners infected with COVID-19 as well as historical testing numbers, employee communications regarding COVID-19 and weekly COVID-19 updates. The frequency with which the dashboard is updated, as well as the quality of the data it contains, raises questions about the department’s transparency.
For instance, Oregon prisons have had a COVID-19 test positivity rate of 100% since May 2021, based on the corrections department’s data.
Street Roots reviewed all 87 weekly COVID-19 updates available from the corrections department, dating back to Sept. 24, 2020. The updates track the number of positive tests and recoveries among staff and the number of recoveries, deaths, negative and positive tests among prisoners.
The number of negative tests for prisoners, 25,538, has remained the exact same for more than a year, since May 21, 2021. The corrections department refused to explain the unchanged number of negative tests when asked by Street Roots.
The corrections department has also refused to answer general questions about testing protocols, like how often prisoners are tested and who determines which prisoners are tested.
Meanwhile, the number of positive tests increased steadily since May 21, 2021 — the same timeframe in which the negative test number remained static — from 3,614 to 5,407 , as of June 6. A corrections department prison population report from June 1 lists the Oregon prison population as 12,135.
Another piece of information the corrections department refused to clarify is the COVID-19 prisoner death count, which remains anomalously low.
Despite a lack of comprehensive data regarding COVID-19 in prisons, studies using available data found an increased risk of exposure due to prisons' congregate living settings and a mortality rate among prisoners that is more than twice that of the general population — but not in Oregon, according to corrections department statistics.
In fact, corrections department data reports a total of 46 COVID-positive prisoner deaths among 5,407 prisoner cases, a case fatality rate of 0.85%, slightly lower than the statewide case fatality rate of 0.99%.
Although Oregonians living in congregate settings, like nursing homes, make up a fraction of the state’s population, they account for a significant portion of COVID-19 deaths in the state. The Oregon Health Authority acknowledges the high-risk nature of congregate settings, including “congregate living” as a known risk factor for heightened exposure to COVID-19.
Nationally, the mortality rate for COVID-19 is 1.2%, according to Johns Hopkins University. According to a study by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, across the country, COVID-19 deaths in prisons occurred at more than twice the national rate of non-incarcerated people.
"It's remarkable how many (prisoner deaths) have happened in the last year. I've been following this for some time, and I cross-reference (deceased prisoners) with people who have contracted COVID, and they're on the list, and some of them had COVID three, two weeks before they died, and it’s not marked as a COVID death." — Juan Chavez, Attorney
The corrections department declined to answer questions about its COVID-19 mitigation strategies, though Juan Chavez, an Oregon Justice Resource Center attorney representing prisoners in a lawsuit against the corrections department, isn’t sure the reported number of prisoner deaths from COVID-19 is accurate.
“It's remarkable how many (prisoner deaths) have happened in the last year,” Chavez said. “I've been following this for some time, and I cross-reference (deceased prisoners) with people who have contracted COVID, and they're on the list, and some of them had COVID three (or) two weeks before they died, and it’s not marked as a COVID death.”
Chavez, who has access to additional information regarding prisoners who have tested positive for COVID-19, said he was unable to provide more information due to privacy laws and pending litigation. The corrections department declined to offer specific information regarding how COVID-19 deaths are counted or classified.
When a prisoner dies in Oregon, Oregon State Police are notified and a medical examiner determines the official cause and manner of death. Lt. Steve Mitchell with the Oregon State Police said in-custody deaths are often investigated at the county level.
“County authorities will gather information about the circumstances, including the medical history of the decedent,” Mitchell said. “The investigation will be reviewed by a county medical examiner if one is appointed or the State Medical Examiner’s Office if one is not. The medical examiner tasked with reviewing the case will determine cause and manner of death.”
According to Oregon State Police, a county medical examiner is mandated by law to maintain medical-legal death investigator narrative reports, autopsy reports and toxicology reports. The reports are typically not released to the public.
County medical examiners are responsible for determining the cause and manner of in-custody deaths, unless one is not available, in which case the Oregon State Medical Examiner makes the decision. Beyond making those determinations, the state medical examiner’s office is not involved in the corrections department’s handling of COVID-19 inside prisons.
“Our reports may contain information about in-custody deaths, however, we don’t routinely extract this data from our reports or create statistical reports tracking in-custody deaths,” Mitchell said. “For several years, our office has provided a list of in-custody deaths, as reported to our office by local medical examiner programs, to the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission. Other than this brief report, we don’t create any statistical reports specific to in-custody deaths.”
While the medical examiner’s reports are stored in a digital information system, the OSP does not otherwise track in-custody deaths.
In 2020, 23 inmates died from COVID-19. In 2021, that number dropped slightly to 21. So far this year, two inmates have died from COVID-19, bringing the overall total to 46 lives lost, according to the corrections department.
As previously reported by Street Roots, 52 prisoners died in Oregon state prisons last year, including the 21 COVID-19 deaths, making it the deadliest year in recent history in Oregon prisons.
According to numbers from the corrections department, the worst outbreak in Oregon prisons began late last December, continuing into and peaking this January, with active cases topping out at 570 the week of Jan. 20.
Two weeks after the outbreak’s peak, on Feb. 3, the corrections department announced the 45th death of an inmate due to COVID-19.
The 46th COVID-19 death was reported by the corrections department on April 14.
COVID-19 transmission Also included in the corrections department’s dashboard is a breakdown of how it classifies risk of COVID-19 spread inside Oregon prisons, offering rare insight into some of its safety procedures.
The corrections department categorizes COVID-19 spread inside its facilities by color: green, yellow, or red, a departure from the prior system of ranking the transmission risk inside prisons on a tiered scale from 1-4.
A facility in the “green” category has no active cases of COVID-19 and allows for “modification of enhanced COVID-19 prevention strategies.” A status of “yellow” indicates a facility has at least one active infection or is located in a community with elevated transmission and requires officials to “consult on which enhanced prevention strategies can be continued to be modified.” A status of “red” indicates active transmission occurring inside a prison and “requires active management and mitigation by enhanced COVID-19 prevention strategies.”
Prisons in the “green” category are allowed flexibility in mask-wearing, meaning masks are not required in most areas, especially if a facility has been at “green” status for more than two weeks. No matter its status, masking is required at Coffee Creek Intake Facility, where there’s currently a growing outbreak affecting several dozen prisoners.
All prisoners sentenced to serve time in Oregon’s prisons must first spend approximately 30 days at the Coffee Creek Intake Facility, which is separate from Coffee Creek Correctional Facility, before transferring to a different institution.
Currently, there are six prisons with “green” status, four in “yellow” status, three prisons in “red” status.
Oregon State Prison, Coffee Creek Intake Facility and Coffee Creek Correctional Facility are at “red” status, indicating active transmission occurring inside, according to the corrections department’s ranking system. Despite the presence of a prisoner with an active case of COVID-19, Warren Creek Correctional Facility remains on “green” status.
Overall, COVID-19 transmission increased inside Oregon prisons over the past week, according to data from the dashboard. There are currently 54 COVID-positive prisoners in the entire prison system, up from only 10 active cases at the end of May. At Coffee Creek Intake Center, there are 48 active cases, compared to five cases at Oregon State Prison and one active case at Warren Creek Correctional Facility.
Two Rivers Correctional Institution Two Rivers Correctional Institution, which had the highest number of prisoner deaths from COVID-19 in 2021, is also the focus of a lawsuit regarding mask-wearing among staff. The court filings offer insight into how prison staff is handling the pandemic as it proceeds through its third calendar year.
Although all prisons in Oregon have had significant transmission of COVID-19 among prisoners and staff, Two Rivers Correctional Institution has had more than double the number of cases among prisoners than the facility with the second highest number of cases, with a cumulative total of 1,288 cases.
In 2021, a total of 18 prisoners died at Two Rivers Correctional Institution, and 15 of the deceased were COVID-positive at their time of death. Three prisoners have died at Two Rivers so far in 2022, but according to the corrections department, none of those three were COVID-positive.
Approximately one-third of staff at Two Rivers received a medical or religious exemption to the corrections department’s COVID-19 vaccine requirement, according to a lawsuit filed by a prisoner at Two Rivers regarding lack of mask-wearing by prison staff in April.
Snake River Correctional Institution, the facility with the second largest number of cases, has 618 cases to date. In 2021, 11 prisoners died at Snake River, none of which were attributed to COVID-19.
The Oregonian reported in March that a top official in the Oregon corrections department advised prison staff to seek religious exemptions to avoid taking the vaccine, resulting in nearly 1 in 5 corrections department employees receiving an exemption, the highest of any state agency.
According to the corrections department’s mask-wearing policy, unvaccinated employees are required to wear N-95 masks. However, because a “mask enforcement officer” is unaware of staff members’ vaccine status, the policy is “impossible” to enforce, according to the lawsuit filed by the prisoner at Two Rivers.
Some staff members at Two Rivers Correctional Institution refuse to wear masks “because they do not believe in masking, believe masking rules are a violation of their rights, or believe that COVID-19 is not real,” the prisoner’s attorney said.
Lack of transparency The Oregon Department of Corrections refused to answer the majority of Street Roots’ questions regarding COVID-19 in its facilities, exhibiting a lack of transparency that is common among corrections departments across the country.
The UCLA Law project, COVID Behind Bars , tracks COVID-19 transmission occurring in prisons across the country and rates each state's corrections department, the federal Bureau of Prisons, and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement based on availability of data related to COVID-19 cases, tests, vaccinations and deaths. The project first launched in March 2021, and has reevaluated the data transparency of each corrections department six times since.
Last March, Oregon was one of only 11 states that did not receive a “failing” grade based on the availability of its data on COVID-19 in prisons. Since then, Oregon’s grade has fallen to an “F” due to low transparency and lack of data on vaccine uptake, booster uptake, prison populations or active COVID-19 cases among staff.
This is part of an alarming trend, according to the UCLA researchers behind the project.
“Despite the proven public health value of this data, we are seeing the lowest levels of transparency since the start of the pandemic. In this round, 49 of 53 agencies received a failing score — the most ever,” the researchers said in an April blog post . “The historic lack of transparency around what happens within facility walls enables neglect and, ultimately, results in preventable deaths.”
Piper McDaniel contributed to this report.
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