Lompoc Prison

Voices from the inside
during the height of the COVID-19 Crisis

Introduction

This oral history and data justice project is part of a series by Global Environmental Justice to expose stark disparities and disproportionate impact of human and environmental rights in Santa Barbara County.

This is the most comprehensive documentation of severe human rights violations during the height of COVID-19 at Lompoc Prison; in addition to information regarding Lompoc Prison’s little known status as a Superfund Site.

This website was developed for the public to understand the depth of the humanitarian and environmental crisis that takes place just miles away from one of the wealthiest communities in California, and to provide extensive information for researchers, human rights and environmental activists to pursue investigations.

Ron Shelee

Ron Shelee was incarcerated at Lompoc prison’s minimum security camp for 11 months, from November 2019 to September 2020, during the height of the COVID crisis.

The Federal Correctional Institute in Lompoc, CA is located in Santa Barbara County. It includes a men’s medium-security penitentiary with an adjacent minimum-security prison camp. According to the Bureau of Prisons (BOP), the average offender at the Camp is imprisoned for a nonviolent drug-related offense. 51% of the incarcerated men are Latino. 13% of the incarcerated men are Black, a statistic that is double the state’s Black population which stands at 6.5%.

Ron is paralyzed from the waist down and has used a wheelchair for the past 26 years.

Ron's health conditions include problems with his kidneys and bladder, COPD and Acid Reflux. He has severe breathing problems. Ron is 49, but his doctors told him he has the lung capacity of an 84-year-old man. He gets severe headaches if he is unable to use his catheter regularly.

While incarcerated at Lompoc, Ron was denied vital medications, catheters – and at times, even his wheelchair.

He was sentenced for 5 years at the minimum security camp. After a long struggle to secure his release when COVID was raging through the prison and it was estimated that nearly all incarcerated men had contracted COVID, Ron finally secured compassionate release.

At the height of the pandemic when Lompoc prison had the highest rate of COVID amongst all the BOP facilities, Ron said there was no social distancing, there were no masks. Instead, prisoners were jammed into overcrowded spaces, including a moldy lunch room turned makeshift medical ward.

In addition to the human rights violations experienced by Ron, his story also draws attention to the environmental rights violations of Lompoc prison. The prison is situated on a landfill that may according to the Army Corp of Engineers contain unexploded weapons and according to the EPA underground petroleum tanks. In 1982 Lompoc prison was entered into the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Information System otherwise known as Superfund, designating it as an abandoned waste site, with no record of a clean up.

Ron’s daughter drove him from Washington State to surrender himself at Lompoc. Although he was assured by the judge presiding over his case that he would receive proper medical care at Lompoc, upon arrival he realized they were not at all equipped to receive someone who could not walk.

Ron described Lompoc as wheelchair inaccessible, a violation of federal law. He said the prison was never equipped to deal with Ron's disability. And, he said prison staff even told him as much when he arrived.

Lisa and close family members were a 17-hour car ride away from Ron at Lompoc. Because of the distance, they were never able to visit him after he initially surrendered himself.

Lompoc staffers forced Ron to use a wheelchair that didn’t fit his disability when he arrived at Lompoc. Ron told them:

Ron’s housing unit had one bathroom. There were three toilets to serve 250 men. The housing unit’s one bathroom posed major problems for Ron and highlights the numerous indignities he experienced due to his disability.

Ron said that he received good care from some prison doctors. Other medical care providers, prison staff and officials got in the way of medical treatment necessary to keep his health from severely deteriorating.

One doctor tried to help Ron advocate for his medical needs. But the Doctor expressed to Ron that he could not understand why Ron was at Lompoc because it is not prepared for someone in a wheelchair. He said I don’t know why they sent you here.

From the day Ron surrendered at the prison, he went three months without vital medication. Ron suffered from swollen legs and headaches in three months he languished without the catheters or medications prison administrators wouldn’t allow him to have.

When Ron finally did get his medications, he said that they weren’t the right ones. He was also denied the catheters that he needed.

Ron did not receive any catheters until near the end of his time at Lompoc.

COVID-19

COVID hit Lompoc prison hard. For several months the facility had the highest rates of COVID in the BOP system.

Lompoc had no way of transferring sick inmates out of the prison. According to Ron, they used his wheelchair as transportation for months. With all the extra wear and tear, his wheelchair finally broke.

Ron’s family was shocked that he was incarcerated given his health conditions even prior to entering Lompoc prison.

At one point, Ron’s doctor offered to file for a transfer out of Lompoc. But there was a catch: If he was relocated, he said he was told there was no guarantee it would be to another federal detention camp; Ron could be placed in an actual prison, in a lockup more severe than Lompoc’s minimum-security camp. So, Ron decided to stay put.

Housing during COVID

During the initial deadly outbreak of COVID at Lompoc, inmates were housed in overcrowded conditions. Ron was housed in a small room with 3 other people, in a space that used to be a storage room. One man who slept close to Ron died of COVID, Lompoc authorities still kept them in the room. Ron asked for a COVID test. This was during the time when there was growing public concern over the conditions at Lompoc.

Chrissie Rogers who’s husband was incarcerated at Lompoc during the height of COVID had previously started an advocacy group called Love Your Inmate. Love Your Inmate became a vehicle for sharing information amongst family members who were cut off from contact. She also organized several protests against the conditions.

Lompoc and Santa Barbara leaders (Patricia Solorio, Jane Quant) mobilized with Chrissie to launch Lompoc Family Task Force to empower families and advocate for immediate change.

Alarmed by the rapidly deteriorating situation in Lompoc, Congressman Salud Carbajal, then US Senator Kamala Harris and Senator Diane Feinstein wrote several letters to then BOP Director Michael Carvajal demanding a response to the unfolding humanitarian crisis at Lompoc prison.

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The conditions during COVID continued to deteriorate.

The Lompoc Administration also reopened a kitchen that had been condemned due to mold, as a housing unit.

Ron said, “They were supposed to be remodeling the kitchen because it was moldy and everything. But when COVID came, they started housing people over there in the place that they can’t have as a kitchen. I was shocked to see that”

The moldy kitchen served as a crudely improvised medical clinic.

“I said people are supposed to be leaving this place, but nobody is leaving here. I said, we don’t even got social distancing or anything in this place. We are still cram packed in this place”

At one point, Ron was confined here with three other men, at least one whom had COVID.

The Hole

The man who died was James Houston, Ron’s close friend. Mr. Houston was 74 years old. Ron asked to be tested for COVID-19 the week he died. Ron worried he was infected because James “only lived 2 feet away from him.”

Lompoc officials regularly sent incarcerated men to solitary confinement as a form of quarantine. Ron believes he was sent to the hole as punishment for asking for a covid test

Chrissie’s husband expressed the familiar fear of dying while isolated in the SHU which was commonly used as a form of ‘quarantine’.

Later that month, Ron wrote what he titled a “statement regarding B.O.P abuse” to the Bureau of Prisons detailing the ordeal.

On Monday, May 11th, I returned to the medical clinic at 9:00 AM and the PA administered the test.

At 3:00 PM, the same day, I was called back to the medical and they informed me I was being sent to the segregated housing unit (SHU), commonly referred to as the “Hole,” where they sent prisoners involved in serious violations of prison rules.

I was treated as if I committed an offense worthy of being sent to the “Hole.”

Ron was ordered to strip naked and put on a prison-issued paper suit. It was “about 3 sizes too small” and ripped in several places.

"I am naked and only have a thin blanket to cover myself with."

The CO said he would bring Ron another blanket, but he never did. In his letter, Ron describes his cell in the hole as “small,” “dank” and “very dirty.” He said that he asked for cleaning supplies to make it more sanitary but was denied.

Ron was finally released from solitary after 7 days. When he returned to his cell, Ron injured his right side trying to transfer from his wheelchair into his cell’s shower. When he slipped and fell, Ron said he couldn’t reach the emergency button because it was placed too high for someone in a wheelchair to reach. When he couldn’t get assistance, Ron crawled back to his bunk. He was bruised so badly from the fall that extra fatty tissue developed, and he still experiences pain today.

Lompoc’s slow, lax response to COVID contributed to a deadly outbreak at the entire prison complex, including Ron’s camp. The local newspaper, the Santa Barbara Independent, reported on a federal investigation into conditions at Lompoc as the pandemic worsened.

“It took Lompoc officials more than two weeks to carry out an order from their superiors at the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to begin the “compartmentalization” of staff because the complex didn’t have enough bodies to fill all its mandatory posts, including 24-hour guard duty at local hospitals where some Lompoc inmates were receiving care. By the end of April, the BOP had dispatched nine medical staff and 99 correctional officers from other prisons around the country to fill Lompoc’s ranks.”

Staff screenings for COVID were minimal. The men jailed at Lompoc weren’t properly monitored or tested when they showed signs of the virus. One man who had been coughing and vomiting – confirmed symptoms of COVID-19 – wasn’t admitted to the hospital for two days. The Independent reported:

“By that time, the virus was starting to take hold across multiple units in the prison, ultimately infecting more than 1,000 inmates and staff. Four inmates died from the virus, and others suffered debilitating medical complications. At one point, the complex had one of the highest infection rates in the entire federal prison system.”

Ron and Lisa both wrote numerous letters to try to save Ron’s life.

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© Ron Shelee

Lisa contacted Lompoc officials on Ron’s behalf.

Lompoc Administrators were not keeping an accurate count of testing which raised alarms for families as well as the Federal Government. In response to reports of uncontrolled infection at Lompoc prison, The Federal Department of Justice ordered its Inspector General to conduct an investigation into the conditions of the prison. The Final DOJ report, General Pandemic Response Report: Remote Inspection of Federal Correctional Complex Lompoc, released in July 2020, found that staffing shortages, inadequate screenings, a scarcity of protective equipment, poor communication, and a lack of leadership lead to the deadly outbreak at Lompoc. Additionally, the failure to follow the directives of the CARES Act which ordered the BOP to prioritize home confinement for those at serious health risk increased the death rate and rate of severe illness at Lompoc.

Documentation confirms Chrissie's suspicions.

Below is a brief sample of Lompoc’s COVID testing records, obtained through a FOIA request. This sample is reflective of the total 181 page testing record. It provides evidence of a consistent pattern of isolation in solitary confinement for men despite negative tests; discrepancies such as listing those with negative tests as recovered; ongoing symptoms despite being labeled as ‘recovered; isolation occurring over a week after a negative test was reported; retests occurring almost two months after initial testing and forced isolation in solitary confinement. These records corroborate the stories from the inside, reporting regular use of the SHU for isolation despite negative Covid tests.

Notably, the DOJ Inspector General reports that the first staff member to test positive for Covid occurred on March 27th 2020. But in Lompoc’s records, there is no record of this person testing positive in the Lompoc Covid records.

Home Confinement

On April 3, 2020 Attorney General Barr issued a memorandum entitled “Increasing Use of Home Confinement as Institutions Most Affected by Covid-19” to immediately maximize appropriate transfers to home confinement. In the three following weeks, BOP Central Office sent Lompoc 9 rosters identifying 509 inmates determined potentially eligible for home confinement. Lompoc determined that approximately 150 inmates identified by the BOP Central office were eligible to be transferred to home confinement or an RRC (Residential Re-entry Center) But more than one month after the memorandum was issued, only 9 of those had been placed into home confinement or RRC under the CARES Act.

Pattern Scores

According to Attorney Don Spector, Executive Director of Prison Law Office, The ACLU filed motions against the BOP because the BOP and Lompoc’s Warden were not following regulations according to DOJ’s memorandum under Attorney General Barr, for releasing people on home confinement. Instead the Warden and BOP regularly used prior offenses as a disqualifier for compassionate release. Additionally, a predictive algorithm, Prisoner Assessment Tool Targeting Estimated Risk and Needs (PATTERN), was used to discourage compassionate release. PATTERN scores predict risk of recidivism. PATTERN and other predictive policing tools used by the criminal legal system have come under intense criticism for embedded bias which disproportionately punishes and targets marginalized people (O'Neil, 2016; Benjamin, 2019) PATTERN scores assess 17 variables including age of first arrest, criminal history, infractions convictions while incarcerated, education, number of programs completed. non-compliance with financial restitution. These select variables do not account for overpolicing in BIPOC neighborhoods, financial constraints post-release (Alexander, 2010), dis-investment in education, biased distribution of infractions based on discrepancy of prison guards, as well as elimination of educational programs, such as in In Lompoc, where all educational programs in the Camp had been eliminated. These factors became determinants of release that provide equal or greater weight to release decisions than health conditions, therefore forcing the most vulnerable to remain incarcerated where, “the risk of getting COVID, getting sick because of COVID and then not being treated is really high.”

In May 2020 a class action lawsuit was filed on behalf of a number of men who were incarcerated during the same period of time as Ron. They charged former Lompoc Warden Louis Milusnic and former BOP Director Michael Carvajal of deliberate indifference leading to cruel and unusual punishment, a violation of the 8th Amendment. The suit was settled in November 2022. As part of the settlement Lompoc was ordered to follow the law and implement the conditions of the CARES Act.

Ron was determined to speak out about his harrowing experience at Lompoc and hopes his story will help bring change to the system that is responsible for at least 311 Covid deaths across the Federal system.

"I told myself that when I got out I would try to help people as much as I can because I knew that place was nothing but a death trap for especially the coronavirus"

Lompoc COVID Timeline