Pretrial Brief Filed in Fluvanna Contempt Case
The brief calls for VDOC’s persistent non-compliance with the Consent Order entered in February 2016 to end. The women incarcerated at FCCW continue to suffer from woefully inadequate medical care in patent breach of the obligations the Defendants willingly assumed under the provisions of the Settlement Agreement reached by the parties and approved and entered by this Court as a Consent Order on February 5, 2016.
Even before this Court entered the Consent Order, VDOC officials knew that its for-profit contractor, Armor Correctional Healthcare (“Armor”) was failing. Persistent understaffing led to staff turnover, failures in training and supervision, miscommunications, deadly medical mistakes and, ultimately, to a culture of unhappiness and uncaring that permeates FCCW’s health care operations to this day. A critical lack of leadership at FCCW was allowed to fester. Essentially, at every turn, and at every level, VDOC failed to hold the contractor accountable for providing an appropriate level of care at FCCW.
Now, approaching two and one-half years after the Settlement Agreement was approved, and some nine months after the filing of the Show Cause Motion, the Plaintiffs still experience deprivation or mismanagement of care for their serious illnesses, unalleviated chronic pain and a substantial risk of harm, including preventable, premature death, attributable to the VDOC’s consistent failure to provide constitutionally-adequate medical care at FCCW as mandated by the Consent Order.
Plaintiffs’ Pretrial Brief in support of their Motion for Contempt
