Public health experts say prisons are especially vulnerable during an epidemic with inmates living in close quarters – many of them elderly or suffering chronic diseases.
Here in Virginia, the Department of Corrections has stopped visitation because of COVID-19. But prisoners and advocates are still worried.
Askari Danso is an inmate at Red Onion – a prison in Wise County. He was transferred to that maximum security correctional center for trying to organize fellow prisoners around issues of human rights. Now, his attention has turned to COVID-19.
“For about two and a half weeks I’ve been beating the drum, and more guys have been raising issues," he says. "The response by the administration has essentially been: Don’t panic. Don’t overreact. It’s not that deep, but obviously we’re watching TV like everybody else. We’re seeing things happen in America that we haven’t seen in our lifetime, so we’re concerned.”
So far he claims the prison is doing little to protect inmates or staff.
“The staff is not practicing any social distancing. They act funny and look at us strangely when we ask them to stay away from us. We can’t catch corona from one another. We can only catch it from somebody bringing it into the prison, yet the staff aren’t wearing masks. They’re not being tempera checked.’
Danso is healthy, and at 40 he doesn’t worry so much for himself as for others at Red Onion.
“I’m in a unit with guys who have cancer, HIV, asthma, diabetes," he explains. "The coronavirus would be devastating. If it was to come in here right now it would be devastating, and [administrators] have absolutely no plan.”
He wonders where people would be quarantined, how prisoners would be fed or cared for if employees come down with the virus, and he adds that the prison is just not prepared for a medical emergency.
“You talk about a fragile healthcare system, we have one doctor. We have no ventilators. You think you’re behind the eight ball out there? We are way behind the eight ball!”
The situation has alarmed Virginia’s ACLU, which wrote to prisons and detention centers statewide, asking officials to immediately implement evidence-based plans. The state’s department of corrections says it will stop transferring prisoners from local jails for 30 days and has banned family visits, but guards come and go – a practice that worries the Sentencing Project – a national non-profit that advocates for prison reform.
Senior research analyst Nazgol Ghandnoosh says we should all be concerned.
“Because staff go back and forth between their communities and the prisons and jails they work at, they transfer illnesses from these correctional settings home, and from home back into these environments, but also if people incarcerated need care in the hospital setting, they will be transferred to a hospital, and we know that our goal as a society right now is to reduce the burden that we’re placing on hospitals.”
In Iran, which has been battling the epidemic for weeks, 54-thousand prisoners were released to prevent further spread of the new corona virus, and Ghandenoosh says some communities in the U.S. are freeing inmates from local jails if they pose no threat to public safety.
“[Cuyahoga County] in Ohio has been releasing hundreds of people. In San Antonio they’re suspending arrests for minor offenses so as not to crowd jails. In Washington, D.C. a chief judge has issued an order allowing police and prosecutors to release a person with a citation instead of holding them in detention pending a court appearance. We know a lot of people are in prison with just a few months or weeks left until their release date. We know a number of people that are elderly.”
To find out whether such measured might be considered here, we called and e-mailed the Virginia Department of Corrections and the Secretary of Public Safety. So far, we've had no response.
***Editor's Note: The Department of Corrections posted an updated news release on its COVID-19 response Wednesday morning. Click here to read it.
