‘Not doing their job’: Clay County jail has not vaccinated its inmates for COVID

While most Kansas City area jails have been vaccinating inmates for months, the detention center in Clay County has yet to administer a single COVID-19 shot.

As the delta variant of the virus continues to spread across the region, cases in Clay County have jumped 44% in the past two weeks, according to data from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services.

The more transmissible variant has pushed up numbers in the Kansas City metropolitan area, which added more than 2,600 new cases in the past week. Meanwhile, hospitals in southwest Missouri continue to deal with an overwhelming number of COVID-19 patients, most of whom are unvaccinated. This week, state officials sent ambulances, staff and other aid to help with the crisis.

Public health experts have pointed to jails and prisons as examples of facilities where the virus can contribute to overall community spread.

But no vaccines have been administered at the Clay County jail, said Capt. Robert Hays of the Clay County Sheriff’s Office. Recently, an area of the jail had to be placed on lockdown as a COVID-19 precaution.

In Missouri, vaccine availability expanded to all adults several months ago, on April 9. It was expanded to all adults March 29 in Kansas.

The Shawnee County jail in Topeka began vaccinating inmates April 5. The Jackson County Detention Center in Kansas City held a clinic April 15.

Earlier in the pandemic, COVID-19 ripped through facilities across the country with more than 407,000 people in prison contracting the virus and more than 2,530 deaths, according to the COVID Prison Project, an initiative based at the University of North Carolina.

People living in confined settings are at a higher risk for contracting the virus. Jails in particular can be dangerous because of the volume and frequency of people being booked in and released back into the community.

The vaccine delay in Clay County has advocates and family members worried.

Viola Bowman, 60, has been in the Clay County jail for more than six years awaiting trial. Her brother Andrew Taylor said he was disappointed with the sheriff after hearing Bowman had asked about getting the shot but was told no.

“(The sheriff) is charged with keeping these inmates, these people who are incarcerated prior to trial, safe,” he said. “He is failing at doing that.”

Bert Malone, a board member of the Missouri Public Health Association, said inmates should be considered a high-risk population.

“Frankly I would say that the folks who are responsible for the medical care of individuals are not doing their job if they’re not getting them protected and that’s through vaccine,” Malone said.

‘It’s deplorable’

Taylor said Bowman went to the hospital late last week with COVID-19 symptoms.

Bowman has been in the Clay County Detention Center since January 2015. She is awaiting trial and presumed innocent.

A few weeks ago, according to Taylor, Bowman had inquired about getting vaccinated, but was told it wasn’t available.

“It’s deplorable,” Taylor said. “It shows a lack of caring on our sheriff’s department.”

His sister was released from the hospital and sent back to jail where she was still having difficulty breathing and feverish, according to Taylor.

Bowman was featured in a 2019 series published by The Star because of the amount of time she has awaited trial. Prosecutors accuse Bowman of fatally shooting her husband and staging the scene to look like a break-in, but have conceded that the case is circumstantial.

In October, a mistrial was declared after a juror and court staff member were exposed to COVID-19.

A new trial is scheduled for September.

The jail — where a dayroom was recently placed under lockdown as a COVID-19 precaution — has not administered any doses yet.

In an email Thursday, Hays, with the Clay County Sheriff’s Office, said they hope to have a head count for the vaccine by Monday.

“While the detention staff are working on numbers, emergency management and the county health department are preparing a plan to administer the vaccine ASAP,” he said.

More than 250 people were incarcerated in the jail as of this week, according to Clay County’s website. The vast majority were awaiting trial.

Forrest Behne, policy director for the COVID Prison Project, said it was disconcerting that a local jail was not vaccinating yet, especially since most of those people have not been convicted of a crime.

“There exists a moral imperative to provide for the health of the people that we as a society have in our correctional facilities,” he said. “They’re in our custody and care, we need to be offering some base level of protection and security for them.”

Vaccination was important for people who are incarcerated as well as the communities they are part of, Behne said.

“It’s incredibly important for the incarcerated individual because these spaces are extremely dangerous in terms of the potential for contracting COVID or any communicable disease,” he said. “The other factor here is that offering vaccines to incarcerated individuals is extremely important for the communities in which these facilities exist.”

“They do not exist in a vacuum, especially when it comes to jails.”

Vaccinations administered

The Jackson County Detention Center, which saw outbreaks last winter, vaccinated 104 inmates on April 15, according to Jackson County Sheriff Darryl Forté.

The jail is working with county officials on a second opportunity for inmates to receive vaccinations. It could be a single-day or multi-day clinic, Forté said.

The Wyandotte County Detention Center is offering the vaccine to inmates, Capt. Kyle Harvey said. The sheriff’s office has worked with WellPath, its contracted medical provider, and the Unified Government’s health department, to distribute the shots.

A total of 227 inmates — more than 50% — are fully vaccinated. That rate is considerably higher than Wyandotte County itself, which is at about 36%, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Johnson County Detention Center began offering the vaccine in March. Since then, it has fully vaccinated 110 inmates and administered another 75 shots to people who began vaccination before they were booked in and needed their second dose, said Shelby Colburn, spokeswoman for the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office. The jail’s medical provider has the vaccine on hand and continues to offer it when inmates make the request, she said, adding that they also promote vaccination at intake, during clinical encounters and at wellness checks.

The Platte County Detention Center notified inmates of a May 20 vaccine clinic, telling them the shot was being offered at no cost.

The Platte County Health Department administered doses to 16% of the population, Maj. Erik Holland said.

The jail is in discussions with the health department about coming back for more clinics in the near future, Holland said.

The Shawnee County jail in Topeka began vaccinating inmates April 5. Since then, 113 Johnson & Johnson shots have been administered, deputy director Tim Phelps said.

The one-shot J&J option made more sense because the population can be transient, he said, making Pfizer and Moderna’s two shot regimens more logistically difficult.

The doses were provided for free by the Shawnee County Health Department.

Phelps said he had expected a higher rate of vaccination.

Malone, with the Missouri Public Health Association, said jail and health care staff should work on educating inmates about the vaccine and consider offering incentives.

Vaccination efforts are even more urgent now, as the delta variant spreads. If it gets into a jail, “it’s going to spread like wildfire and the consequences could be very, very severe,” Malone said.

“I just think it’s putting your head in the sand to deny vaccine to inmates. It’s only going to erupt and they need to get ahead of it.”

This story was originally published July 23, 2021 at 3:18 PM.

Katie Moore

The Kansas City Star

816-234-4312

Katie Moore was an enterprise and accountability reporter for The Star. She covered justice issues, including policing, prison conditions and the death penalty. She is a University of Kansas graduate and began her career as a reporter in 2015 in her hometown of Topeka, Kansas.