The Isolation of the Incarcerated: Coronavirus and American Prisoners
Art by DonkeyHotey.
When the Eastern New York Correctional Facility suspended its affiliation with the Bard Prison Initiative, Kenneth Hogan correctly predicted that the precautionary measure was only the first of a series of forthcoming changes. Hogan, an inmate in the all-male maximum security facility since 2002, had never perceived so grim an atmosphere than that which followed the withdrawal of the Bard educators as a pandemic-induced pall overcame the prison campus. In an opinion published in The Guardian, Hogan describes the ensuing suspension of all visitation from the outside, save for that of defense attorneys. In order to compensate for the lost visits, the prison would provide inmates with five free letters via postal mail, two free electronic email stamps via JPay, and one free phone call via Securus per week until the crisis was resolved. For Hogan and the other prisoners, a palpable “sense of dread” overcame any sense of security. “All I kept thinking was: what if I never get to see my family again?”
The current emergency has infiltrated even the smallest of institutions across America, from grocery stores to gas stations; it has also penetrated the heavily guarded confines of domestic prisons and correctional facilities. As communities shut themselves indoors, prisoners already within finite spaces are faced with a dire truth: in America’s jails and prisons, where social distancing is impossible and sanitizer is usually banned, it is proving physically impossible to slow the rate of infection.
While the immediate consequences of outbreaks across local, state, and federal correctional facilities have exacerbated pre-existing tensions between inmates and the inherently flawed criminal justice system—resulting in hunger strikes in immigration detention centers and demands for more protections from prison employee unions—the coronavirus has shed light on a longer-term revelation.
As anxiety and fear mount in the homes, unemployment offices, and healthcare clinics of American civilians, the even more dire conditions endured by the estimated 2.3 million individuals incarcerated across the country have revealed the blatant inhumanity that already existed within cell walls. At the start of March 2019, the Cook County Jail in Chicago had two COVID-19 diagnoses; by Sunday, the 29th of March, 101 inmates and a dozen employees had tested positive for the virus. Astate prison near Cook County reported its first coronavirus-related death on Monday, March 30th, while Michigan prisons had 78 positive tests, as of April 1st. Furthermore, as New York City remains the epicenter of the pandemic, the Rikers Island jail complex has at least 650 confirmed cases, as well as one confirmed inmate death, as of April 6th. And at least 38 inmates and employees in the federal prison system have contracted the virus, with one prisoner having died in Louisiana. He was serving time for a nonviolent drug charge. As more cases are confirmed, it is also apparent that prisons will soon become unable to provide the necessary medical resources, tests, and ventilators that are integral to eliminating fatalities.
The ability to combat the virus’s impact on the American prison system relies on more than medical resources, however, as COVID-19 exposes the underlying issues within America’s criminal justice system. In considering the impact of the current pandemic on incarcerated Americans, it is crucial to understand that the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. As revealed through this current pandemic, its correctional facilities are frequently crowded and unsanitary, often filled with a population of impoverished people with a historical lack of consistent health care, many of whom suffer from pre-existing conditions. Practices urged elsewhere to slow the spread of the virus—avoiding crowds, frequent handwashing, disinfecting clothing—are nearly impossible to carry out inside prisons. For example, sanitizer is contraband, given its alcohol content; water supplies are often contaminated; internal showers have been closed, in an attempt to reduce the spread of contagion. Hogan documents the suspension of educational and religious worship facilities. Prison labor—an exploitative system that forces inmates to work for inhumane wages—also closed as a result of social distancing measures, eliminating the prospect of any consistent income for those incarcerated.
Within weeks, the fear gripping incarcerated citizens has become a dreaded reality: many inmates will die alone in their prison cells without access to proper medical treatment. Even as prisons and jails have attempted to increase the supply of medical resources and cleaning supplies, the economic exploitation that has pervaded the criminal justice system for decades still exists. As an example of this, Arizona prisons force men and women to pay for their own personal hygiene supplies, like soap and toothpaste. If they need medical attention, such as being seen by a nurse, it's a $4 copay. Many cannot afford these expenses, especially in light of the loss of expected prison employment opportunities, leaving them vulnerable. It is thus an ethical and moral disparity that reveals the consequence of unnecessary medical costs on prisoners, as inmates across the country find themselves unable to adequately combat cold and flu symptoms that would otherwise perhaps prove treatable. The economic control of medical and sanitary resources possessed by the Department of Corrections, however, is only the tip of an iceberg in a historically unjust system of mass incarceration in America.
Abusive conditions in modern prisons are directly linked to the presidency of Ronald Reagan: mass incarceration stems from his addition to Richard Nixon’s 1971 declaration of the “war on drugs.” However, the problem cannot be attributed to Reagan alone, although his policies certainly resulted in increasingly racist methods of arresting, trying, and incarcerating Americans. When Reagan left office, the American prison population had almost doubled. It was the Democrats, too: mass incarceration was accelerated by laws passed beneath the Clinton administration: the 1994 Crime Bill provided financial incentives that indirectly motivated states to increase their prison populations. Simply put, America’s approach to punishment does not provide for the public welfare, disproportionately affects minorities, and inflicts sentences far harsher than the crimes they are meant to punish. The Brennan Center for Justice found in 2016 that fully 39 percent, or 576,000, of American prisoners were in prison without any public safety justification for their incarceration, and could have been punished in a less costly and damaging way, such as through rehabilitation or community service. With that said, even if this group of inmates were released, the United States would still incarcerate at a far higher rate than comparable countries.
As prison populations grew, facilities became unable to adequately accommodate and provide for incarcerated individuals, resulting in cramped cells and open bays, a limited supply of medical and sanitary resources, and inconsistently staffed hospitals and clinics. Essentially, it seems evident that our archaic system of racial policing and mass incarceration has directly increased the spread of coronavirus in prisons, albeit forty years after the advent of such rapid prison population growth. As COVID-19 ravages correctional facilities across the country—in facilities where inmate populations are composed of a disproportionate number of black and brown people—it has become soberingly apparent why virus-related deaths seem particularly common in communities of color throughout the country. American correctional facilities now stand upon a precipice, in which the direct release of inmates, particularly those convicted of nonviolent crimes, seems the only viable way to eradicate the potential for monumental fatalities in local, state, and federal prisons.
As COVID-19 continues to reveal the inequalities that serve as the foundation of the current prison complex, there must be an abolishment of local and federal prison systems, in order to assure the prioritization of the previously neglected incarcerated. Through this lens of equal opportunity, it seems only ethical that there be a direct release of federal inmates, under the consideration that those convicted of felonies be subject to expanded home confinement. As an example of this, one might turn to Rikers Island, New York City’s main prison complex. Per the order of Mayor Bill de Blasio, over 650 inmates have been released since the declaration of stay-at-home orders by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo in March. A majority of those released were convicted of nonviolent crimes, with many related to the disproportionate drug-related arrests that became commonplace in the late 1980s, or serving sentences of less than a year.
Similar patterns of release have been practiced across the country, with nonviolent offenders or those serving abbreviated sentences accounting for a vast majority of those released. In practicing this direct release of federal prisoners to curb the spread of the coronavirus pandemic within the prison system, it is apparent that there was never a compelling need to imprison these people in the first place. Instead, as an America in crisis releases many of the incarcerated, it has slowly, without knowing, moved itself closer to presenting a just society and criminal justice system.
With that said, the country is still far from ideal in its treatment of minority communities and the incarcerated, with the release of prisoners only the first step in a necessary series of social and economic reforms and restructuring. Similarly, the economic disadvantages that have plagued inmates in the face of the coronavirus pandemic exist even after they are released, as those nonviolent inmates who have been freed have disproportionately been returned to poverty and homelessness. Faced with no permanent housing, they are as susceptible to contracting the virus as they might be within the walls of a prison complex. In order to truly consider the criminal system as just, one must understand the strides still necessary in combatting the systemic racism that is inherent to the American concept of justice. Courtrooms are still presided over by racist judges and entirely white juries. Law enforcement continues to racially profile, enacting stop and frisk policies that disproportionately target people of color. In his Philosophy, Politics, and Society, Bernard Williams holds that “society (that is, each of us acting together in some organized fashion) should make provision for the important needs of all of its members.” In releasing inmates to environments where they might be able to practice social distancing appropriately, while also gaining access to medical and sanitary needs not provided for in the prison system for those with preexisting health conditions, America would be prioritizing the needs of these members. In doing so, society might finally restructure one part of its criminal justice institution—an institution historically built on a foundation of racist laws and policies—to become an institution prioritizing the welfare of the incarcerated.
The current coronavirus outbreak represents the criminal justice institution’s obligation to the entirety of the American population, beginning with a reevaluation of the inequalities that have directly impacted conditions within domestic correctional facilities. As underscored by a history of mass incarceration and systemic injustice in prisons and jails, the current pandemic reveals a lack of medical and economic resources afforded to federal inmates. In addition, the inability to adequately social distance in prison complexes necessitates the release of these incarcerated people. It is only once this right to liberation is obtained that the American prison system can begin to consider itself a fair and just institution. It is only once this freedom, from both illness and injustice, is granted to inmates like Hogan, that the entirety of our national population can begin to recover.
Adam Kluge is a staff writer at CPR and a sophomore in Columbia College studying Political Science and History. He can typically be found searching for the best chai latte in the city, browsing the internet for photos of Golden Retrievers, or discussing Meryl Streep's filmography. He is from Buffalo, New York.