Can Custody Officers Be Held Liable for Exposing Inmates to a Communicable Disease?

This post is offered as a discussion topic only and does not represent legal advice. Officers must refer to the laws in their own State as well as their agency's policies, which can be more restrictive on officers than the law requires.

Scenario: An officer is working custody when BAM, there’s an illness outbreak. To try to mitigate the outbreak, the officer and other officials decide to move several inmates from one facility to another.

Can the officer be held liable if the inmates at the facility the sick inmates were moved to become sick?

Answer: This was discussed in the 2023 9th Circuit Court of Appeals case Hampton v California. Here inmates were moved from California Institution for Men to San Quentin Prison when an outbreak of COVID-19 spread throughout the facility. In this case, The 9th Circuit said, “Defendants—a group of high-level officials at CIM, San Quentin, and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation ("CDCR")—were aware of the risks that COVID-19 posed in a prison setting. All had been briefed on the dangers of COVID-19, the highly transmissible nature of the disease, and the necessity of taking precautions (such as social distancing, mask-wearing, and testing) to prevent its spread. Defendants were also aware that containing an outbreak at San Quentin would be particularly difficult due to its tight quarters, antiquated design, and poor ventilation.” 

The problems here were that prison officials knew the inmate's Covid tests were outdated, the inmates were not provided with personal protective equipment, and officials disregarding the medical staff's concerns that the transfer was taking place too fast to manage all the complexities of keeping the virus from spreading.

The court said, "In such circumstances, it is a "prison official's `deliberate indifference' to a substantial risk of serious harm to an inmate" that violates the Eighth Amendment."

Another case that came from this incident was Polanco v Diaz in which the wife of a prison guard died because of COVID-19 exposure. The 9th Circuit also affirmed the district court's decision to deny qualified immunity. So, the bottom line is, if you do not take all precautions into consideration and an inmate or custodial staff contract an illness, you may not be entitled to qualified immunity under Federal Law and are open to litigation. 

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