LEXINGTON, Ky. — December was a catastrophic pandemic month for prison inmates in Kentucky who are stuck behind bars with nowhere to socially distance.
Inside the state prisons, the official COVID-19 death toll more than doubled from 17 inmates and two employees on Dec. 1 to 37 inmates and five employees as of Monday, according to data provided by the Kentucky Department of Corrections.
Separately, seven inmates died during December at two federal prisons in Eastern Kentucky, one in Ashland and the other in McCreary County’s Pine Knot community.
The majority of state inmate deaths have occurred at the Kentucky State Reformatory, a prison in Oldham County primarily meant to hold medically vulnerable inmates. Of the 28 inmate deaths from COVID-19 at the Kentucky State Reformatory, 16 occurred in December, according to state data.
Additional COVID-19 inmate deaths in December were reported at Blackburn Correctional Complex in Lexington, Little Sandy Correctional Complex in Elliott County and Northpoint Training Center in Boyle County.
However, nearly all of the 14 state prisons have seen COVID-19 outbreaks over the past year. There were 691 active infections among inmates and staff at state prisons as of Monday.
Prison officials say they’ve aggressively tested inmates and staff and segregated inmates to try to curb the spread of the virus.
“The Department of Corrections remains committed to protecting the offenders in its custody and our staff,” agency spokeswoman Lisa Lamb said Monday.
“We continue to work in collaboration with the Justice and Public Safety Cabinet and the Department for Public Health to ensure proper protocols are being followed in accordance with the guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for correctional settings,” Lamb said.
As of mid-December, the death rate for Kentucky state prison inmates was 359 percent higher than for Kentucky overall, according to an analysis by The Marshall Project, a nonprofit in New York.
Gov. Andy Beshear last year ordered the early release of hundreds of state inmates to protect those with chronic health problems and reduce the prison population. However, some critics, such as the ACLU of Kentucky, have said Beshear’s efforts clearly are falling short, given the fast-rising inmate death toll.
The federal prison inmates who died in Ashland were James Velez, 61, of Indiana; Gary Wayne Kilgore, 72, of Tennessee; Timothy Bower, 56, of Michigan; Robert Taylor, 46, of Indiana; James Jones, 79, of Texas; and Avery Poynter, 52, of Kentucky.
The federal inmate who died in Pine Knot was John Charles Buffalo, 51, of Montana.
Earlier in 2020, nine federal inmates died during COVID-19 outbreaks at the Federal Medical Center in Lexington. According to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, another outbreak is underway at the Lexington prison, with 329 inmates and six employees actively infected as of Monday.
Unlike the federal government, the state of Kentucky does not identify inmates who die while in the custody of the state Department of Corrections.
