Lawsuit: FCI Danbury Inmates In Danger From Coronavirus

DANBURY, CT — Attorneys filed a class action federal lawsuit Monday intended to force measures to protect over a thousand inmates at the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury from the new coronavirus.

The complainants allege that the inmates "are at imminent risk of contracting COVID-19, which feeds on precisely the unsafe, congregate conditions in which they are held."

Named as respondents in the lawsuit are the Warden at FCI Danbury and the director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The complaint accuses them of being "aware of the grave dangers posed by COVID-19" but failing to "implement measures to comply with their constitutional obligations to those in their custody."

The suit seeks "emergency orders requiring... the immediate transfer of the most medically vulnerable individuals to home confinement or other appropriate settings and immediate implementation for those who remain of the social distancing and hygiene measures essential to lowering the risk of the disease and of death."

The suit identifies four incarcerated plaintiffs, aged fifty years and over, alleged to have underlying medical conditions that place them at risk of death should they contract COVID-19. It claims that the dining and sleeping conditions at FCI defy social distancing recommendations, and that there is no medical staff permanently assigned to the facility or available 24 hours a day.

The suit was brought by lawyers from Silver Golub & Teitell in Stamford, the Civil Justice Clinic at Quinnipiac University School of Law, and the Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization at Yale Law School.