COVID-19 outbreak infecting hundreds at Fort Dix is 'escalating crisis,' N.J. senators warn
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
On Oct. 29, the prisoners of building 5812 at Federal Correctional Institution Fort Dix, the low-security prison in central New Jersey, were invited to a town hall meeting about the COVID-19 outbreak raging through the facility.A list of about 70 names had been posted behind plexiglas. The remaining 150 men who could not find their names on the list were told to assume they had tested positive, advocates said. Their cell block was now a quarantine unit.
One, Troy Wragg, whose complex medical conditions had already left him wheelchair-bound, had been the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit filed by the ACLU of New Jersey seeking release for a class of medically vulnerable people. A federal judge dismissed the case in May. Now, Wragg wrote to his wife, his fears had been confirmed: “I am sick. It is official. Prayers and hard work are all that will help.”
Families and advocates are raising alarms about the conditions at Fort Dix, where 229 prisoners and 12 staff are now sick. They say the outbreak was preventable — and blame the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) for transferring 150 prisoners this fall from Ohio’s FCI Elkton, where more than 1,000 prisoners and staff have been infected.
On Monday afternoon, New Jersey’s U.S. Senators, Cory Booker and Bob Menendez, sent a letter to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons calling the situation a “rapidly escalating crisis.” The situation, they said, demands an indefinite moratorium on inmate transfers, and immediate testing of all staff and prisoners.
Read more: https://www.inquirer.com/news/fci-fort-dix-coronavirus-covid-outbreak-transfers-elkton-cory-booker-bob-menendez-20201110.html
Wow. Anyone who grew up/lived/lives in this area knows about Fort Dix in New Jersey (where all the base reorganization eventually had it become Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, combined with 2 other military facilities).
However I didn't connect that there was a correctional facility there too (apparently done some time around or after 1992 and some infamous politicians spent time there).
= new reply since forum marked as read
