COVID vaccines (Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation)

Emma North-Best filed this request with the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation of North Dakota.
Multi Request COVID vaccines
Est. Completion None
Status
Payment Required

Communications

From: Emma North-Best


To Whom It May Concern:

Pursuant to the North Dakota Open Records Law, I hereby request the following records:

* Files, including letters, memos and emails, describing or discussing policies, guidance and procedures for providing COVID-19 vaccines to prisoners/inmates and/or staff.

* Files mentioning or describing the number of vaccines given to prisoners/inmates and/or staff.

I am a member of the news media and request classification as such. I have previously written about the government and its activities, with some reaching over 100,000 readers in outlets such as Gizmodo, MuckRock, Motherboard, Property of the People, Unicorn Riot, and The Outline, among others. As such, as I have a reasonable expectation of publication and my editorial and writing skills are well established. In addition, I discuss and comment on the files online and make them available through non-profits such as the library Internet Archive and the journalist non-profit MuckRock, disseminating them to a large audience. While my research is not limited to this, a great deal of it, including this, focuses on the activities and attitudes of the government itself.

As my primary purpose is to inform about government activities by reporting on it and making the raw data available, I request that fees be waived.

The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.

In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.

Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 10 business days.

Sincerely,

Emma North-Best

From: Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation

Good afternoon,

We have some emails, but we don't have much else as we aren't tracking staff vaccinations and have not had any residents vaccinated.

We assume that we will be offering COVID vaccine in a similar fashion to a flu vaccine or a COVID testing event.

If you want us to go through our emails for anything containing "vaccine" then we are estimating 10-12 hours at least. According to NDCC 44-04-18(2) an entity may impose a $25 per hour for locating records and excising confidential or exempt materials, minus the first hour. The estimate of this open record request is 11 hours x $25.00 = $275.00

Please let me know if you would still like to move forward with this request as we do require payment before releasing the records.

You can send the check or money order to:

ND DOCR
Attn: Michelle Linster
PO Box 1898
Bismarck, ND 58502-1898

Kayli Richards
Director of Communications * Public Information Officer

Files