Life inside in the time of COVID

As of last night there were eight confirmed cases of covid-19 in Oregon prisons: three staff members at the Oregon State Penitentiary and three inmates and two staff members at Santiam Correctional Institution.

Everyone knew this was coming. And no one expects this will be the end. It is the beginning. Prisons are, in the words of public health experts, “petri dishes.”

On Monday, the Oregon Justice Resource Center along with two attorneys as co-counsel filed a class action suit against the Oregon Department of Corrections and Governor Kate Brown. The suit alleges that inmates’ rights are being violated by the “willful and/or deliberately indifferent medical care provided to them.” The seven members of the class action are all older than 60 and/ or have chronic health concerns that put them at additional risk.

This is from the Oregon Justice Resource Center’s announcement of the suit:

The plaintiffs are concerned that COVID-19 poses a serious risk to the health of all who live and work in Oregon’s prisons. There are many reasons why incarcerated people and those who work with them may be especially vulnerable to outbreaks of infection, including living at close quarters to one another, unsanitary conditions, poor health, and the large numbers of people who cycle through the system. Prisons are not built to adequately withstand a global pandemic; ODOC is not equipped or resourced to handle a public health crisis of this magnitude.

What’s happening inside? Here are three examples, according to first-hand information gathered by the OJRC:

An inmate in one prison became “very ill” with fever, dry cough, lethargy. He was denied a COVID-19 test. He was quarantined but still required to take his meals with the general population.

An inmate in another prison is housed in a dorm with 117 other women where the beds are three feet apart. Forty of the women have health conditions that put them at additional risk from COVID-19.

An inmate at another prison is on the hazard clean-up crew and has received to training or protective gear other than gloves. The disinfectant he is required to use is not an EPA-registered disinfectant effective against the virus that causes COVID-19.

Whatever is happening in our own stay at home/ mask up/ wash your hands lives, we might want to take a moment to think about the lives of the 2.3 million people incarcerated in American prisons and jails.

*Excerpt from a poem written by “Ted Point,” one of the men in my Lifers’ Writers Group at Oregon State Penitentiary