Mwalimu Shakur could only talk for six minutes.
Shakur is at California’s Corcoran state prison, where there have been 1,290 Covid cases and seven deaths since the pandemic hit. During our phone call just before Thanksgiving, the prison was on the verge of graduating from the tight phase one reopening protocols that typically follow an outbreak – just as millions of Americans on the outside prepared to mark the milestone of an in-person holiday season. This meant that Shakur and the other 3,604 men at Corcoran were allotted just one hour each day to shower and stand in line for the handful of phones.
Phase two would grant the men an additional 30 minutes out of cell, and the return of in-person visits. But it hadn’t happened yet. “That’s supposed to be starting today, so we’ll see,” Shakur told me. Someone was waiting for the phone, so he had to go.
Even as Covid infection rates begin to climb across the US, the arrival of vaccines and boosters have made many feel like the pandemic is over. In prisons, however, life looks much like it did at the start of the pandemic. Quarantines and lockdowns remain common, along with confusing and conflicting information from the people in charge. For incarcerated people nationwide, it’s almost as if the spring of 2020 keeps repeating itself.
I’ve spent years reporting on prison conditions across the country – conditions that were often deplorable even before Covid hit. Last March, when I began receiving letters from incarcerated people detailing their experiences of the pandemic, those early letters mirrored the confusion promulgated by top government authorities about the virus. Now, nearly two years later, many describe policies that seem more punitive than preventive.
‘I’m more afraid of another lockdown than of getting sick’
Inside prisons across the US, 34 of every 100 people are known to have been infected with Covid, nearly four times the infection rate of the general US population. Public health researchers cite crowding as a major contributing factor; several state prison systems and the federal Bureau of Prisons are operating past 100% capacity.
All the while, incarcerated people have reported being stuck in cramped cells and crowded dorms with little access to PPE, soap, or other cleaning supplies, among prison staff who often flout masking protocols with little consequence. “I think the most disturbing thing for me is the no-mask guards,” says “Alice”, who incarcerated in the federal prison in Aliceville, Alabama, which has remained crowded throughout the pandemic. (Alice asked that her real name be withheld to avoid retaliation.)
But Alice cites other concerns, too: large numbers of unvaccinated people; a lack of testing; mingling between units in the dining hall during lunch. She has stopped going to lunch altogether. “In some ways, I feel like a sitting duck, with another wave of Covid just around the corner,” Alice says. “The flimsy cotton masks we are given are no comfort there, either.”
Alice isn’t just worried for her health. Over the summer, she says that women who exhibited Covid-like symptoms were taken to solitary confinement, where they spent 23 hours alone in a cell. “Conditions there were horrendous, and some people were truly traumatized by that experience and still talk about it in my unit,” she says. Meanwhile, the remaining women were locked in their cells for 23 hours each day, with one hour allowed for phone calls and showers.
Elena House-Hay, age 25, is one of 992 prisoners at Pennsylvania’s Muncy women’s prison, where more than 500 Covid cases have been reported since the pandemic began. Like Alice, she dreads the thought of another outbreak.
After testing positive for the virus last winter, House-Hay says she had to drag all her belongings through the snow to the prison’s quarantine unit, an open dormitory with 32 cubicles that each contained two bunk beds. During the two 30-minute periods the women were allowed out of cell each day, they had to choose between showering or standing in line to phone home, send mail or sync their prison-issued tablets to receive and send e-messages. It was a miserable experience.
“I’m more afraid of the psychological consequences of another lockdown than I am of getting sick,” says House-Hay.
The fallout of ‘utter mismanagement’
The persistent threat of Covid in prisons has taken a painful toll on the loved ones of those who are incarcerated. Though the majority of prison systems have reinstated outside visits, many have placed restrictive new visitation guidelines into place. At Muncy, for instance, House-Hay reports that the women are allowed to briefly hug but not kiss their visitors. They can no longer share food from the prison’s vending machines, nor can children sit on their incarcerated parent’s lap.
But some jails and prisons have not reinstated visits. The Spokane county jail in Washington state is among those that have not; the facility was also slow to adopt video calls, which only became available this July. For Maddesyn George, who was arrested in July 2020, the lack of video or in-person visits meant missing a year of her baby daughter’s life. She watched her daughter Shynne grow from a four-month-old infant to a 19-month-old toddler through photographs that her parents mailed.
Now, she can see her on a screen for half an hour – but only if Shynne can stay focused on the computer.
Even in prisons that have reinstated visits, dramatic new restrictions on visiting hours pose another barrier to in-person family contact. Before the pandemic, Aliceville offered six-hour visits on weekends, and family members could visit both days. Now, visits are limited to one hour behind glass. At Muncy, pre-pandemic visits could last all day if visitors were traveling more than three hours, or if the visiting room wasn’t busy, and guests could visit for several days in a row; today, they get one two-and-a-half-hour visit a week.
For both House-Hay and Alice, whose families live hundreds of miles from their respective prisons, the curtailed lengths have been prohibitive.
Alice takes advantage of the free video calls offered at Aliceville, scheduling three to four each week with her partner and children. While they’re “certainly better than nothing,” Alice says the calls are no replacement for in-person visits. But for now, the Bureau of Prisons says that Aliceville’s visiting hours will not be extended, nor will contact visits be reinstated because of the fluctuating transmission rate in the surrounding community.
“At this point, prisons are using the utter mismanagement of Covid as an excuse to not reinstate normal operations,” says Alice. “[Due to] their lack of Covid prevention measures, [they will] prolong the pandemic inside – and, with it, all the restrictions and hardships.”
For House-Hay, the winter seems a bit more promising. Pennsylvania began offering prisoners incentives for vaccinations early on; in Muncy, that has resulted in the full vaccination of 78% of incarcerated people (as opposed to just 45% of staff). Because she is vaccinated, House-Hay is allowed to borrow books from the prison library, spend time in the prison yard, work at the prison metal shop and eat meals outside her cell. She makes Christmas decorations and plays games with friends in the common area. “It is not normal,” she says, “but it is not stagnation.”