Independent monitoring of jail conditionsin V.I. still on hold amid payment dispute

Parties to a federal consent decree mandating reforms at the St. Thomas jail are set to meet for a status conference Friday following months of gridlock amid a dispute over payments to the independent court-appointed monitoring team.

The case has been ongoing in U.S. District Court since 1994 after the American Civil Liberties Union sued the V.I. Bureau of Corrections on behalf of a plaintiff class of prisoners. A settlement agreement reached in 2013 calls for a series of specific reforms. The Bureau will not be released from federal monitoring until a judge agrees that the government has reached substantial compliance with the consent decree, and is no longer violating detainees’ Constitutional rights.

The court issued a case management order on Feb. 7, and the parties submitted letters to the court “regarding the issue of payment of the Court Experts,” and briefed the issue in June, according to a status report filed Monday by attorney Maria Morris of the ACLU’s National Prison Project. “Monitoring is on hold pending resolution of this issue.”