Rights commission recommends better quarantine measures at prisons

By Bahk Eun-ji

The nation's human rights watchdog said Wednesday that the government's response to mass infections at correctional facilities months ago was insufficient, and recommended improvements to the medical and quarantine systems for inmates by upgrading emergency response guidelines and manuals.

The National Human Rights Commission of Korea (NHRCK) expressed this opinion in response to petitions filed by four inmates against the Ministry of Justice and heads of two detention centers ― Dongbu Detention Center in eastern Seoul and Seoul Detention Center in Uiwang, Gyeonggi Province.

The NHRCK said it had confirmed that the correctional facilities failed to properly respond to the mass infections in December last year and January this year, and thus the inmates' right to health was infringed on.

According to its investigation, the Dongbu Detention Center did not notify the inmates of the COVID-19 test results and refused to confirm the results when asked.

Shortly after the Dongbu center received the results of the first virus tests for all inmates on Dec. 18, 185 prisoners who had been in close contact with the two who tested positive were kept on standby in one space for four hours, without proper quarantine rules such as personal distancing. They all tested negative in the first test, but 98 percent of them were later confirmed positive by Dec. 31.

It was shown that correctional officers there hadn't noticed for 41 minutes that one inmate had lost consciousness and collapsed although he had been under camera surveillance. It took another 16 minutes for them to attend to him directly and CPR was not carried out immediately.

Officers there also did not even know that they should transfer patients to a state-designated hospital in Gyeonggi Province in such coronavirus-related emergency situations. The prisoner died while they were discussing his transfer to a medical institution.

The heads of the two detention centers claimed that they tried their best, explaining that it was inevitable due to limitations in the number of medical personnel and overcrowding of correctional facilities at the time.

However, the NHRCK said the justice ministry should have established an emergency transfer plan in advance.

“Correctional facilities have a high risk of mass infection as people stay in closed cells without keeping distance from each other,” it said. “They should have prepared adequate quarantine measures in advance.”