For a dozen criminals in California who were sentenced to prison and incarcerated at the California Institution For Men in Chino, their punishment has become a death sentence.
As of yesterday, June 4, twelve inmates who were in custody at the state penal facility in Chino when they contracted COVID-19 have died.
Three of California’s prisons are dealing with large-scale outbreaks of the coronavirus. Those include the Institution for Men in Chino, Avenal State Prison in Kings County and Chuckawalla Valley State Prison in Blythe. Initially, the Institution for Men had the largest number of cases of infection among all of the state’s prisons, but has since been passed in that dubious regard by Avenal and Chucawalla.
Nevertheless, according to the prison population COVID-19 tracking page on the California Department of Rehabilitation’s website, no other deaths from COVID-19 or its complications besides those at the Chino prison have occurred within California’s prison system.
Last month, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation transferred 691 inmates considered vulnerable to the coronavirus because of their age or medical condition from the San Bernardino County facility to other prisons around the state where until that time there had been no known incidences of the coronavirus.
In more than 20 cases, prisoners from the California Institution for Men who had grown seriously ill with the condition had been transferred to hospitals or medical facilities near the prison, though officials did not disclose the exact locations where this had taken place.
The total number of prisoners at the California Institution for Men who had come down with the coronavirus since the progress of the disease has been charted was not available, although one published report put that number at 672. At present, there are 474 active in-custody inmates there with the condition. According to state prison authorities, 207 inmates at the California Institution for Men are deemed to have recovered from the malady.
At the not-too-distant California Institution for Women-Frontera in Chino, 108 inmates there are currently showing signs of the disease.
Previously, testing of inmates at the California Institution for Men was sporadic because of the shortage of testing supplies. With that shortage addressed, all inmates are now being tested.
-Mark Gutglueck