Attorneys urge Gov. Newsom to stop involuntary transfers from San Quentin prison
After a Federal Judge ordered the population of San Quentin State Prison to be reduced by 50% in order to protect people from the coronavirus which has claimed the lives 28 incarcerated people and 1 corrections officer at the facility, advocates learned that some were now being forced to transfer to other prisons despite infections present in every other facility statewide. Lisa Fernandez of KTVU FOX2 reported on a letter attorneys sent to Governor Newsom to direct the CA Department of Corrections to halt these transfers.
“The ruling said that people at San Quentin should be released or transferred, only if the transfer can be done safely and there is nowhere safe to put people right now,” said [danica rodarmel, state policy director at the san Francisco public defender’s office]. “Every prison has an outbreak.”
