When COVID-19 shelter-in-place orders disrupted court systems, suspended jury trials were suspended, and closed law schools  throughout the United States, PLAN harnessed the unengaged legal capacity created by pandemic shutdowns to advocate for people inside who were suffering inhumane COVID-19 conditions of confinement.  Prison facilities were self-evidently unable to comply with CDC guidelines as to social distancing or other life-saving public health recommendations. By unifying the under-utilized capacity of attorneys, legal workers and law students whose legal cases or classes were in abeyance, PLAN’s COVID-19 Legal Services Drive catalyzed the formidable legal expertise dispersed throughout our communities into action. 

Contributors to the COVID-19 Legal Services Drive – including seven Harvard Fellows with the Harvard Law School Systemic Justice Institute’sCOVID-19 Rapid Response Institute – consolidated compelling legal reference documents (such as sample pleadings that had successfully effected prisoners’ release) and developed actionable legal analysis. This clearinghouse of templates, analysis and relevant literature were made available to practitioners who were advocating for the release of prisoners due to COVID-19 or challenging arguably unlawful pandemic conditions in a variety of municipal, county, state and federal jurisdictions. They were also provided to incarcerated pro se litigants who were advocating on their own behalf and jailhouse lawyers who were helping others inside. The PLAN COVID-19 Campaign generated work product for 30 state and federal jurisdictions. This work product includes: 1) Executive Summaries that set forth facts and trends related to pandemic conditions in prisons and jails and related Executive Orders, Court Orders and legislation, 2) primary source materials such as applicable Executive Orders, Court Orders, legislation, media coverage and official data, 3) responses to public records requests and 4) Legal Memoranda that set forth legal standards and analysis that may be relevant to challenging pandemic prison conditions.

PLAN made this research, analysis, and primary source materials publicly accessible online, through a Continuing Legal Education training and by direct mailing these materials to incarcerated individuals. In so doing, PLAN helped minimize duplication of effort and assure that outputs could be rapidly applied by practitioners and pro se litigants who were filing emergency requests during the pandemic.  PLAN also advocated for improved conditions during the pandemic through direct action and media mobilization.

PLAN’s joint investigation with the ACLU of Delaware uncovered compelling evidence that conditions at James T. Vaughn Correctional Center were markedly worse than other Delaware state prisons in the months preceding the February 2017 Vaughn uprising. PLAN analyzed prison conditions that were reported by 2,207 incarcerated individuals who were imprisoned in facilities throughout the State of Delaware in the months before and after the Vaughn incident. This analysis revealed a drastic escalation in allegations of unconstitutional conditions at Vaughn in the months preceding the February 2017 Vaughn prison uprising. This sharp uptick in prisoner reports of inhumane treatment in the lead-up to the uprising was unique to the Vaughn facility. When this data was adjusted to account for disparities in Delaware facility population sizes, it became clear that the per capita rate of complaints for Vaughn prisoners increased more precipitously than in any other Delaware Department of Corrections (DDOC) facility during the same period. 

Following the release of PLAN’s findings and recommendations, issued jointly with the ACLU of Delaware, Vaughn prisoners reported a marked de-escalation in physical attacks by prison officers, which had apparently become commonplace in the period following the February 2017 uprising.

An increasing number of prison systems are instituting so-called, “social media bans,” which prohibit prisoners from maintaining social media accounts that are administered on their behalf by their friends or loved ones in the outside community. These prison directives prohibit the posting of prisoners’ writings to social media accounts that are attributed to them in some way. These social media accounts help prisoners maintain relationships with their loved ones in the outside community. They are especially important for indigent prisoners who rely on their small monthly quota of “indigent stamps” to send social mail because one letter can easily be shared with an entire community of loved ones via social media accounts. As a result, these bans disproportionately impact incarcerated individuals who lack financial means. Prisoner social media accounts have also proven to be an effective means of raising public awareness of inhumane conditions of confinement. By prohibiting this channel of communication, prison agencies insulate themselves from public scrutiny and accountability for policy- and rights-violating prison conditions.

In some cases, social media bans are not codified in system-wide policy, but are instead facility “rules” issued by Wardens or other prison administrators. However, these bans function as de facto policies, because prisoners who are found guilty of violating them are frequently subject to disciplinary sanctions which may include the loss of good time. In effect, if a member of the public creates a social media account for someone inside and uploads letters that are mailed out by them, that incarcerated person’s prison term could be prolonged through a disciplinary loss of good time.

PLAN has vigorously challenged social media bans. Because courts have held that the scope of prisoners’ constitutional rights is narrower than the those enjoyed by people on the outside, PLAN adopted the novel approach of defending the rights of affected prisoners as to this issue by invoking the First Amendment rights of their friends and loved ones on the outside. In consultation with partners at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, PLAN contributed to the rollback of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s interpretation and application of its social media ban for TDCJ prisoners. PLAN did so by arguing that TDCJ was violating the First Amendment rights of members of the public whose rights of free expression arguably include freedom to publish prisoners’ writings online at their request.

Upon receipt of widespread complaints alleging inadequate drinking water, lack of toilet facilities and flooded cells, PLAN increased local communities’ awareness of the deplorable conditions in Texas prisons following Hurricane Harvey and worked with local attorneys to serve the Federal Bureau of Prisoners (FBOP) and Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) with demands for immediate rectification of these conditions. PLAN received scores of independent reports, both from eyewitness observers and family members in direct contact with prisoners and prison personnel. Some of these individuals attested to these reports in signed affidavits executed under penalty of perjury.

More than two weeks after Hurricane Harvey made landfall, scores of prisoners and their family members reported that many Beaumont-area prisoners remained without toilet and showering facilities and lacked access to adequate food and water. There were widely corroborated reports of missed meals, lack of adequate access to water, and suspended dispensation of prescription medication in the aftermath of the storm. Civil Air Patrol aerial photographs taken approximately one week following Hurricane Harvey appear to support claims that insufficient portable toilet facilities are available to prisoners at TDCJ’s Gist, Leblanc, and Stiles Units.  There were also compelling indications that disruptions to mail delivery and other communications channels remained ongoing at that time.  

TDCJ’s failure to evacuate some units in storm-affected areas was compounded by the agency’s mismanagement of those evacuations that did occur.  The TDCJ prisoners who were evacuated were transported to facilities that were already over-crowded. There were also reports that as many as 600 medically vulnerable prisoners were transferred to Wallace Unit, in apparent violation of a July 2017 court order that deemed that facility unfit to house such prisoners.  That TDCJ’s attempt to address inhumane prison conditions was to transport prisoners from one unconstitutional prison environment to another indicated that TDCJ failed to prepare or implement a sound storm evacuation strategy, despite the apparent availability of Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) resources and support.

Stanley Holdorf, supervising attorney for PLAN, said at the time: “We are appropriately concerned by the grievous human rights violations corroborated by numerous independent eyewitness reports. The remarkable consistency in these allegations establishes convincingly both the seriousness of the situation at storm-affected TDCJ and FBOP facilities, and the fact that rights-violating conditions persist even weeks after the storm. As Jefferson county is known to be situated in a coastal floodplain vulnerable to tropical storms, TDCJ and FBOP’s inadequate preparation for this foreseeable event constitutes a clear failure to uphold their most basic due diligence obligations to ensure safe and humane conditions for the human beings entrusted to their care.”

By shining a national spotlight on these issues and the grievous societal failure they constituted, PLAN increased pressure on FBOP and TDCJ to improve conditions in Beaumont-area prisons. Directly impacted prisoners and their loved ones played crucial roles in this coordinated emergency effort. Beaumont prisoners’ access to drinking water, functioning toilets and dry cells were reportedly restored immediately following this coordinated campaign of legal advocacy, media outreach and community organizing.