Only 6 Kansas inmates released amid COVID-19 outbreak. Why hasn’t Gov. Kelly done more?
We had intended, with coronavirus rampaging so remorselessly through Lansing Correctional Facility, to implore Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly to get a move on.
Under the circumstances, her administration has got to quickly figure out how to release prisoners who are sick or almost ready to be let go anyway or have no business being there in the first place.
What’s the holdup? When we first urged a quick review on April 13, a dozen inmates and 16 employees in Lansing had tested positive for the virus. Ever since then, we’ve been told that Kelly was mulling which prisoners might be freed early, and how.
But the virus wasn’t willing to wait, and as of Friday, two inmates had died and 86 staff had tested positive at Lansing, plus five workers in other state prisons. In all, 250 inmates have tested positive at understaffed Lansing, including 164 who are asymptomatic. In a single unit there, 75% of those who were tested for the virus tested positive.
When The Star Editorial Board met virtually with Kelly on Friday, she sounded as frustrated as we are with the glacial pace of the response.
A number of other states, both red and blue, have released scores of prisoners: Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine approved the release of more than 100 inmates weeks ago, and in Hawaii, more than 650 inmates have been let go because of COVID-19. In Virginia, 133 inmates have been approved for early release, and in the state of Washington, more than 300 have been freed. In Maryland, Gov. Larry Hogan Jr. signed an executive order to expedite the release of hundreds of prisoners. This is a very partial list.
But Kansas, well, Kansas has released all of six inmates as a result of this pandemic. A pitiful half a dozen have been spared — sent home to serve out the rest of their sentences under house arrest. That’s of the 480 who were getting out soon anyway. Why so few?
“We have been working on that plan and actually started implementing that plan,” Kelly said. “The number I have heard is that we’ve actually released six offenders on house arrest, not just sending them out there.”
Yes, she heard right — four on Thursday and two on Friday, from Topeka and Winfield correctional facilities and the Larned Correctional Mental Health Facility.
And zero from Lansing.
“We did some very serious testing at Lansing,” the governor said, “and found the population to be disproportionately positive, so we are rethinking what we can do in releasing any others. We have to make sure we’re not putting people who are infected into a community.”
In other words, you’ve waited too long, and it’s already too late?
“Yeah, I will tell you that I have been frustrated by how long it’s taken to get at the point where we could release some folks who were really close to being at the end of their sentence anyway,” Kelly said. “But as is often the case, it’s never as easy as it seems.
There are a lot of legal hoops that have to be jumped through in order to make that happen, so yeah, while we were going through those hoops, we got caught up with the outbreak in Lansing. So if you look at it that way, you could say yes, we did wait too late, but it wasn’t like we weren’t trying.”
What about prisoners in other facilities, especially at Topeka Correctional Facility, the women’s prison, where a review of women who are really only there because of their abusers is way overdue.
“We were very enthusiastic about the whole criminal justice reform, and we had begun those conversations with our task force, and that was certainly something that was on the agenda to look at: Are we incarcerating people, and I would say specifically women, for things that perhaps we should not have?” Kelly said.
“Unfortunately, like most other things right now in state government, the Legislature’s no longer here, we can’t convene the task force, so some of those things have been put on the back burner but they’re important, and when we’re able to get back to a little more normal, it’ll come up again and we will deal with the issue.”
While Kelly can’t act on her own, some prisoners will almost certainly die of COVID-19 between now and then, when they don’t have to. Last week, a 30-year-old Native American woman from South Dakota who was serving a 26-month sentence in a federal prison in Texas on a drug charge died after giving birth while on a ventilator.
So while the legal teams in the governor’s office and the prison system try to make absolutely sure that an old statute being dusted off and used to transfer certain kinds of inmates to house arrest is legally up to the job, people who could safely be back at home are instead at great risk.
As we’ve said before, this is not a simple matter, and we appreciate that Kelly, unlike her counterpart across the state line, is as she says trying.
(Missouri Gov. Mike Parson has said he has no intention of releasing any inmates early because of the coronavirus, though 29 inmates in one wing at Southeast Correctional Center have also tested positive. “People are incarcerated for a reason,” Parson has said.)
But this is a dire situation, and one that will only get worse. And with lives on the line, Kelly and her administration have to try harder.
This story was originally published May 4, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Only 6 Kansas inmates released amid COVID-19 outbreak. Why hasn’t Gov. Kelly done more?."