Prison crew cleaned state offices after COVID-19 suspended work release

Crew from women's prison, now home to one of the state's largest outbreaks, was coming in and out of facility until mid April.

Posted 12:36 a.m. May 6, 2020 — Updated 4:39 a.m. May 6, 2020

Travis Fain

, WRAL statehouse reporter

RALEIGH, N.C. — Inmates from the women's prison in Raleigh continued cleaning state offices at Department of Public Safety headquarters for three weeks after the department suspended other work release programs over COVID-19 concerns.

The Charlotte Observer reported the timeline Tuesday. The department confirmed key details of the newspaper's report later in the day to WRAL News.

The state suspended family visits and in-prison volunteering programs March 16, then work release programs March 25, with exceptions for jobs deemed essential. A crew of 11 women from the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women, who were part of a separate program cleaning state buildings, continued working until April 16.

DPS spokesman John Bull said the cleaning and disinfecting work was deemed "essential to the continued effective operations of DPS during the response to this pandemic."

Bull said there's no evidence anyone on the crew contracted the novel coronavirus during the cleaning trips, that most of the cleaning took place in the pre-dawn hours and that most DPS officials have been working from home.

"If there were any interactions with this cleaning crew and state workers at these offices, they were very brief, and social distancing has been practiced since early March," Bull said in an email.

He said the trips stopped when the first offender at the women's prison exhibited symptoms of COVID-19, the illness associated with the virus.

The prison is now home to the second-largest outbreak the state's prison system, with at least 90 positive cases. Neuse Correctional Institution in Goldsboro had 467 confirmed cases at the latest count.

The Charlotte Observer quoted several inmates from the cleaning crew who said they've been diagnosed with COVID-19. Natasha Purvis told the newspaper that the inmates traveled to and from the offices in prison vans. Purvis and another woman told the newspaper they were sometimes near DPS employees in the building.

They were paid a dollar a day for the outside work, the cap by law for prisoners who work for state or local governments.

"I feel like they put us out there for a dollar a day to keep them safe," Purvis, who is serving six years for drug trafficking, told the newspaper. "But they weren’t thinking about us at all."

The state has released some prisoners early as part of its response, and it lists a number of efforts to stem transmission on the prison system's COVID-19 page.

But advocacy groups have pressed Gov. Roy Cooper's administration to do significantly more, and Wake County Superior Court Judge Vince Rozier ordered the department last week to detail prison conditions and its efforts to avoid viral spread.

That information is due Friday as part of a lawsuit filed by the NAACP and the ACLU. Rozier ordered the two organizations to bring him information on nonprofits and other groups that could work with released inmates, and he told both sides to suggest experts the court can consult with as the lawsuit moves forward.

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