The state prison system has been hit with a class-action lawsuit alleging it has failed to screen for, treat, and accurately report on the hepatitis C virus behind prison walls, charges that mirror lawsuits in a dozen other states.
Massachusetts in March settled a similar case, agreeing to pay $270,000 in legal fees and to treat 280 inmates with advanced hepatitis C over the next 18 months, at a cost of $30,000 to $50,000 per inmate.
A Florida action may cost $10 million, according to estimates.
Commenting Monday on the Connecticut class action, Dan Barrett of the American Civil Liberties Union said screening, testing and treating hepatitis C in prison is as basic as providing inmates with food and water.
“The legal issues across the country are cut and dry,” said Barrett, legal director of the ACLU’s Connecticut chapter in Hartford. “If the allegations here are true, the level of medical neglect is stunning.”
Attorney General George Jespen’s office had no immediate comment Monday.
“We will review the complaint and respond appropriately in court. We would decline further comment,” said spokeswoman Jaclyn M. Severance.
The Connecticut class action was filed Friday by lawyers Kenneth Krayeske and DeVaughn Ward on behalf of inmate Robert Barfield. In court papers, the lawyers assert that Barfield hasn’t received proper treatment in six years, and that he is one of an unknown number of infected inmates — unknown because the Department of Correction has failed to keep count.
The case comes at a juncture where medical malpractice lawsuits against the DOC are queuing up, and the prison system is refusing to release a critical report by an outside consultant on 25 flawed medical cases, including eight deaths.
The state had been paying UConn Health about $100 million a year to provide medical, dental and mental health treatment in prisons. That agreement ended earlier this year, but the costs are not expected to decrease as the DOC takes over the medical care. The new medical director recently resigned over concerns that the department was ill-prepared to take on the care of nearly 14,000 sentenced and unsentenced prisoners — many with opioid addictions.
The drug epidemic is raising concerns about the prevalence of hepatitis C among prisoners and parolees, but the lawsuit charges that the prison system doesn’t effectively screen for the virus, is reluctant to treat it and has never attempted to compile an accurate census of infected inmates.
Prison tattoos are also a major source of the virus.
Hepatitis C infection rates in prisons across the country have varied from 16 percent to 40 percent, the lawsuit states.
In the complaint, Krayeske and Ward say one UConn Health doctor said publicly that half the inmates he saw at one prison — Osborn Correctional Institute in Somers — had the hepatitis C virus. That amounted to 660 prisoners in one facility.
“This whole thing speaks to the fact that the Department of Correction hasn’t had a functional healthcare system in the last 10 years,” the ACLU’s Barrett said.
