Protesters carried signs with statements including “Governor Newsom, Emergency Released Now! Health Over Punishment.” Organizer Michelle Tran, of a group called Families United to End LWOP, wore a T-shirt that read, “Death by Incarceration.” She said the protesters want inmates at low risk for re-offending to be released and greater efforts at sanitation for those who remain.
“Someone needs to be held accountable,” Tran said. Her 43-year-old husband, Thai, was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for a murder conviction and has served 24 years in Avenal State Prison, near Fresno.
Prisons are still overcrowded despite the release of nonviolent offenders because more inmates are always coming in, Tran said. Her group is calling on the state to expedite the release of inmates age 50 and older and those with underlying medical issues.
She said 41,463 inmates have tested positive for COVID-19, including her husband. He didn’t become ill, but 144 men and women have died in prison, including 52 in the past 30 days.
“The health and safety of all who live in and work at our state institutions is our top priority,” CDCR officials said in a statement. “The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and California Correctional Health Care Services have worked closely together and taken extraordinary measures to address COVID-19 within our institutions and to keep staff and the population safe, including mandating the use of masks while on institution grounds, providing personal protective equipment according to public health and health care guidance, conducting mass testing of both staff and the population, and immediately implementing isolation and quarantine protocols in response to any positive COVID-19 case.”
Officials added, “Our active positive cases have decreased over the last several weeks, even as cases within the community continue to climb. We take the COVID-19 pandemic very seriously and will continuously adjust our response as new information and situations arise.”
Families United to End LWOP stages demonstrations at prisons across California to urge Gov. Gavin Newsom to interview inmates incarcerated for life without parole and consider commuting their sentences if they have been model prisoners for decades. She says her husband has earned college degrees and tries to set a good example for younger men.
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Maria says
By the way, thank you protesters!! Hope your efforts will be heard by the Governor. May God bless you’ll.
Maria says
I have read all the replies and am sorry that there is callous people out there. I have a brother in prison for 54 years and I have been with him through it all. But we don’t know the circumstances of each prisoner, and hope to God that you’ll won’t ever have a love one in prison. We all make mistakes, think about your own mistakes ! Besides God will judge us like we judge other people. Be merciful as God is to us. Let’s pray for these prisoners, because Jesus can change their lives. He changed me He can change you too.
LCD says
After reading every one of your comments, it is very clear that none of you either read this article or if you did, you did not comprehend.
Kiki says
These people commited really big crimes and no-one should have sympathy for them not even their families. If we are ordered to stay home and were not criminals them they should never be released either no-one cares if they die they picked what they wanted to do so if that was their choice well there they go stay locked up for ever
Diana says
Please let the rapists, drug dealers, pedophiles and murderers go!!!! We as liberal Californians know they can be productive members of society!
Jr Burns says
Free the inmates with underlying conditions and have been model prisoners.
Duh says
They don’t care about the prisoners welfare, Dems just see convicts as a potential voter pool, why else would there be talking about easing voter restrictions on felons? The same reason they’re talking about lowering the voting age to 16, it’s another potential voter pool, and sorry to say, the same with undocumented immigrants. They don’t actually care. It’s all about maintaining power. If these groups weren’t useful to them, they’d get the same treatment as Trump supporters.
Loam says
“Someone needs to be held accountable,” Tran said. Her 43-year-old husband, Thai, was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for a murder conviction and has served 24 years in Avenal State Prison, near Fresno.
Oh, the irony. Her husband killed someone and she is saying that others have to be held accountable. They committed crimes and they were found guilty. There is no reason to release them from a court-ordered sentence because there is a pandemic spreading across the world. The best place to escape it is in prison.
The state is telling us all to stay home. These prisoners should stay in their cells. It’s the reaction we all should have.
Duh says
I’m sorry if somebody’s loved one is in prison for life without parole, but the fact is, it doesn’t and shouldn’t matter if they’re a model prisoner. If they received that type of sentence, then they’re not in prison to be rehabilitated, they’re in prison to be punished and separated from civil society. If you’re in prison for life w/o parole, then you’re right where you deserve to be.
Quarantine Quinn says
Keep them away from spreading the disease to the outside world.
Jim says
Well pull up your pants and stop commiting crimes. If they are serving Life with No Parole that means you did something really really bad. That means they are Dangerous.
A Patriot says
Yeah, let them out and take our guns away.
Democratic logic.