Biden orders DOJ to phase out contracts with private jails, including Queens lock up
/
President Joe Biden signed an order Tuesday instructing the Department of Justice not to renew contracts with private jail corporations, like the company that runs a lockup near JFK Airport. AP Photo/Evan Vucci
By David Brand
President Joe Biden on Tuesday ordered the Department of Justice to phase out contracts with private detention companies, a move that could impact the operation of one Queens lock up.
The Queens Detention Facility, located inside Springfield Gardens warehouse near JFK Airport, is New York City’s lone private jail. The 222-bed facility is operated by the private prison corporation GEO Group under contract with the U.S. Marshals Service, an agency overseen by the DOJ.
The jail houses cooperating witnesses who are awaiting their own trials and sentencing in federal court. The facility was the site of a major COVID-19 outbreak among inmates and staff first reported by the Eagle in April. Extensive coverage from the Eagle and the Daily News spurred an investigation by state Attorney General Letitia James, who sued GEO Group in federal court last month to obtain records related to their pandemic response at the Queens jail.
Biden tweeted Tuesday that the private jail order was one component of his pledge to “advance racial equity.” People of color, particularly Black and African Americans, make up a vastly disproportionate percentage of the jail, prison and parole population nationwide.
“America has never lived up to its founding promise of equality for all, but we’ve never stopped trying,” Biden tweeted. “Today, I’ll take action to advance racial equity and push us closer to that more perfect union we’ve always strived to be.”
It is unclear how the order will affect the Queens jail, however.
The federal government awarded an “indefinite delivery” contract to GEO Group in April 2019 to operate the Queens Detention Facility at a potential value of $313,281,779. The duration of the contract was not immediately available, but a summary posted on the website GovTribe.com indicates it could run out as early as April of this year.
GEO Group did not respond to a request for comment and information. A spokesperson for the USMS and Department of Justice did not provide contract information
The Eagle broke the story about the conditions and the outbreak at the jail in April after inmates and their loved ones described COVID-sick detainees sharing bunk beds and dorms with non-symptomatic inmates. Staff and inmates did not have personal protective equipment, they said, and a number of guards called out sick, forcing one officer to patrol multiple units at a time.
“Everyone’s coughing, sneezing on top of each other,” said one inmate on April 3. “We’re not practicing social distancing because you cannot do social distancing in this jail because everyone is so on top of each other.”
Over the next two weeks, six inmates, the wives of two others and three defense attorneys described the worsening conditions inside the facility. A handful of inmates filed a federal civil rights lawsuit, which they later pulled, reportedly because they feared losing favorable deals offered by federal prosecutors.
Jail staff initially isolated sick inmates in the jail’s eight-cell segregated housing/solitary confinement unit, but the number of cases quickly overwhelmed capacity in “the SHU,” inmates said.
Five other open dorms were used to “house multiple quarantined contacts not displaying signs and symptoms,” the jail’s warden wrote in a letter to Rep. Gregory Meeks in April. Inmates disputed the warden’s account and said sick and healthy inmates were mixed together throughout the jail.
One man said he had tested positive for COVID-19 and was concerned about spreading the virus to the healthy inmate with whom he shared a bunk bed.
“This is the worst I’ve ever felt in my life,” he said. “They’re not giving us the proper care that I think they should be giving us.”
