Infectious Disease Evacuations Could Incite a Race War in California Prisons

To say that California's prisons are a nightmare is a huge understatement. Overcrowding, subpar health care, rampant violence, and a 70 percent recidivism rate have turned the state's prison system into one of the worst in the country, with conditions so horrifying that the Supreme Court has ruled the state's inmate treatment amounts to  "cruel and unusual punishment."

And while it seemed like things couldn't get any worse, California has now added infectious disease and looming racial war to the litany of problems plaguing its prison system.

On Tuesday, state corrections officials agreed to evacuate 2,600 inmates from two Central Valley prisons after health threats from a lethal airborne fungus known as Valley Fever prompted a federal judge to order an immediate transfer of at-risk inmates, including all black and Filipino prisoners and people undergoing chemotherapy.

According to a March report from the Centers for Disease Control, cases of Valley Fever have skyrocketed over the past decade, particularly in areas of the southwestern U.S., like California's San Joaquin Valley, where the fungus is endemic. In the past three years, 900 of the 5,300 prisoners at California's Pleasant Valley State Prison have contracted the disease, and morbidity rates are similar at Avenal prison, just 10 miles away. The disease has been a factor in at least 36 prison deaths over the past six years.

The disease, which is contracted by inhaling the fungal spores, is typically not fatal, at least among the general population. About half of infections show no symptoms, and the other half show mild or severe flu-like symptoms and rashes if the infection disseminates – and the rate of dissemination is several times higher among African Americans and Filipinos than the general population.

In some cases, particularly among individuals with compromised immune systems, the patients fail to recover and develop life-long pulmonary illnesses. In rare instances, the fungus spreads from the lungs to the brain, bones, and skin, causing skin abscesses, lung failure, and occasionally death.

Although state prison officials have known about the Valley Fever outbreak since at least 2006, the state’s efforts to mitigate the risk by minimizing exposure to dust and spores has been largely ineffectual. In a blistering court order last month, a federal judge wrote that this inaction “clearly demonstrated [the state's] unwillingness to respond adequately to the healthcare needs of California's inmate population.”

By all counts, the evacuation from Pleasant Valley and Avenal will be a logistical clusterfuck. California’s 33 adult prisons are at 150 percent capacity, so there is literally no place for the 2,600 displaced prisoners to go. To make space, the state will have to transfer inmates from other prisons to the San Joaquin Valley as replacements. Of course, those inmates can’t be Filipino, black, or otherwise susceptible to infection.

“There’s just no room in other prisons to move these prisoners to,” CDCR press secretary Jeffrey Callison told Motherboard. “They need to be replaced by an equivalent number of prisoners and that is where this becomes especially complicated. We can’t move at-risk inmates, so the available population in our other prisons is immediately reduced.”

Callison said that it is too early to determine where the displaced prisoners will go or who will replace them, but said that prison officials will also have to take into account security categorizations, medical and mental health care needs, and countless other factors that will make the evacuation a Sisyphean nightmare. He added that it is not clear what kind of recourse inmates would have to fight the transfers, an issue the court-appointed receiver will likely have to address soon.

California prison officials have also raised concerns that the evacuation will upset racial tensions at Pleasant Valley and Avenal, and possibly lead to conflicts at other prisons. California’s powerful prison gangs are racially segregated, and the system is plagued by some of the worst race-based prison violence in the country. Any disruption to the status quo could lead to an outbreak of more racial gang violence, already a pervasive reality on California’s prison yards. In fact, both Pleasant Park and Avenal have experienced multiple inmate race riots in the last four years.

“When it comes to gang issues we need to be sensitive to those factors — clearly this will have an impact on the racial balance in those prisons,” Callison said. “It’s a massively complicated exercise. It really is just an unprecedented situation.”