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Alaska Black Caucus fights visitation ban at prisons
March 6, 2021
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ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) A visitation ban at all of Alaska s correctional facilities because of the coronavirus pandemic should be loosened, officials from the Alaska Black Caucus said.
Celeste Hodge Growden, president of the Alaska Black Caucus, said to reporters on Thursday that the organization had reached out to state officials multiple times to request looser restrictions, but the meetings had been repeatedly canceled.
The Alaska Department of Corrections had halted all in-person visitations at prisons and jails last March, when the virus was first detected in the state.
State officials had said that they implemented the safety precautions to prevent an outbreak at the state s crowded jails.
Print article A visitation suspension that was once put in place to protect people within Alaska’s correctional facilities is now doing the opposite, officials from the Alaska Black Caucus said Thursday. The caucus has been pushing for months to have visitation restrictions loosened in the state’s correctional facilities because of the impact it has on attorney-client communications. The Alaska Department of Corrections halted all in-person visitation last March when COVID-19 was first detected in the state. At the time, officials said they implemented safety precautions in hopes of minimizing the risk of virus spread in Alaska’s crowded jails. But by fall and winter, COVID-19 was spreading rampantly in the state’s correctional facilities.
My client died three days before Christmas. He was incarcerated at Goose Creek Correctional Center. He was 60 years old. He died from complications related to COVID-19.
My client was not a perfect man. Most people in jail are not. But they are people. They are real men and women, with hopes and dreams of their own, both before jail and after jail and even during their time in jail.
My client was born in Anchorage, grew up north of Willow on the family property, and graduated from Su Valley High School. He operated heavy equipment on the North Slope, worked in his community as a carpenter and helped run the family campground at Montana Creek in the summer. He was very attached to his elderly parents, and was devoted to taking care of them. He once sought to serve a sentence out of jail, on an ankle-monitoring program, so that he could continue living near his parents and looking after them.
Coronavirus outbreak in Alaska’s largest prison accelerates
Print article A coronavirus outbreak at Alaska’s largest prison is accelerating, with 110 inmates testing positive for the virus as of Monday. Goose Creek Correctional Center first reported coronavirus cases among inmates on Nov. 2, when the Alaska Department of Corrections announced that 22 inmates and five staff members tested positive. By Monday, the number had grown to 110 positive inmates, according to DOC spokeswoman Sarah Gallagher. As of Monday, the prison, an hour west of Wasilla near Point McKenzie, housed a total of 1,317 pretrial and sentenced prisoners. The Goose Creek outbreak began in one of the prison’s housing units, known as mods. Each houses 64 prisoners. With more than 100 infected, the outbreak seems to have expanded beyond a single housing unit.