Prisons and COVID-19

This morning began with the distressing—but completely expected—news of the first confirmed case of corona virus at an Oregon prison. The person is an employee at Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem, the state’s only max, where more than 2000 men live—most doubled-up in cells meant for one person, cells the size of your bathroom. This is the prison I know well, having spent more than four years as a volunteer there running a writers’ group for Lifers. I went in and out of that prison close to 100 times. I was there early last month visiting an inmate. Two days later, in response to the virus threat, the Department of Corrections closed all the prisons and jails in the state to visitors.

That was a smart move. However, as everyone familiar with this prison knows, OSP houses the state’s second largest commercial laundry, which receives thousands of tons of dirty linen from state hospitals and other institutions. It is unclear what precautions, if any, were taken in response to the threat.

But the virus entered the prison through an employee. With more than 4,500 people working for the Department of Corrections, many hundreds of them staffing three shifts at OSP, the virus has had so many opportunities to enter that it is surprising it took this long. The place is on lockdown as of this morning. That means everyone is confined to their cell 24/7 (except…if this lockdown is like the others…those inmates who work for the laundry).

In a letter to the director of the Department of Corrections, Colette Peters, officials with ACLU Oregon, the Oregon Justice Resource Center, Oregon Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, Partnership for Safety & Justice and Sponsors, Inc., asked her to reduce the prison population by considering people for early release.

“Given the mortality rate associated with the virus, we are concerned about the virus’s spread to at-risk people, particularly the elderly, within the closed confines of a prison setting,” they said in the letter. (Please see ACTION item at the bottom of this post.)

A 2012 study by the ACLU found that Oregon had the ninth-largest population of senior-aged prisoners in the United States, despite being only the 27th largest state by population. Research also shows that people in prison have higher rates of “co-morbidities,” those conditions (diabetes, heart disease, asthma) that make a person more vulnerable to the virus and far more likely to die from it.

If you have been tracking news about the virus and prisons, you know that Cook County Jail (Chicago) has recently reported at least 113 cases involving both inmates and staff. In the federal system, at least 52 inmates and prison workers across the U.S. have tested positive, including a cluster at the federal prison in Atlanta.

A worker there (speaking on condition of anonymity, fearing retaliation) made this point: “We do not have enough masks; we do not have the supplies needed to deal with this. We don’t have enough space to properly quarantine inmates.”

This would be true across ALL prisons and jails. These places where we warehouse 2.3 million people are, in the words of epidemiologists tracking the pandemic, “petri dishes.”

PROTECT OREGON INMATES FROM CORONAVIRUS (COVID19)
Please email, call, Tweet, mail
Governor Kate Brown:
Twitter @OregonGovBrown ‬
900 Court Street, Suite 254, Salem, OR 97301, Phone: 503-378-4582