What’s it going to take for policymakers to care about COVID-19 in prisons?
By Molly Gill
March 12, 2020, was the last day of business as usual at FAMM. We started working at home in make-shift “office” spaces and began a mad streak of 12-hour days, because we knew people we represented — people in prison — were about to enter hell.
During those early days of the pandemic, we warned lawmakers, governors, and anyone who would listen that COVID-19 would be a nightmare in prisons. Thousands would be infected. Many would die. Widespread lockdowns, fear, and poor conditions might lead to riots and violence. We’d already seen that happen in prisons in Italy, and it wasn’t hard to imagine it happening here, in the largest prison system on Earth.
We sent letter after letter to policymakers and prison officials. Some of the requests were basic, including requests for basic hygiene and testing.
Some of the requests were more challenging: Release people vulnerable to COVID-19, and as many others as could safely go home — now. We urged officials to use furloughs, compassionate release, reprieves, and clemency to reduce prison populations to make social distancing easier and to slow the spread.
But we also knew that in virtually every state, release mechanisms were unavailable or inadequate. Too many people in prison are ineligible for release. The red tape to obtain it is miles long. The bureaucracy is too slow for this fast-spreading disease, and people with the power to grant freedom lack the political will or courage to do so. When our nation decided to embark on mass incarceration in the 1980s, we made sure our laws made it easy to put people in prison and almost impossible to get them out.
The pandemic in prison got worse, and so did conditions. Complaints rolled in like waves: Staff weren’t wearing masks. There wasn’t enough hand soap. People were sick and getting no treatment. No one was being tested. Already understaffed and sub-par prison medical bays were overwhelmed, leaving people coughing in cells and scaring their neighbors.
Predictably, thousands of people in prison have gotten COVID-19, and thousands have died from it. The mortality rate from COVID-19 may be lower in prison than it is in the free world, but the terror and psychological anguish of watching your cellmate disappear in a body bag is beyond comprehension.
Despite our urgings, policymakers have done little to nothing to prevent or alleviate this suffering. Lawmakers concluded legislative sessions without reforming laws to allow for releases. Few governors have granted releases, and in almost every case those releases have been too few, too late.
Nine months into the pandemic, I am exhausted and depressed and left asking, “What’s it going to take for policymakers to care about COVID-19 in prisons?”
Will it take riots that leave prisons as burnt-out, corpse-littered husks? Deaths in the tens of thousands? A complete wipeout of prison staff? Mass infections of citizens in the towns and cities near prisons? Prisons are porous and part of the communities in which they are built — a corrections officer carries COVID-19 with him beyond the walls and to his family and neighbors. Even that truth does not scare policymakers into action.
I wish I were surprised that it turned out like this. COVID-19 was always going to be uncontainable and devastating in our bloated, overcrowded prison system. But policymakers could have done more — and can still do more — to make it less of a tragedy.
What will it take for them to do it?
Molly Gill is FAMM’s Vice President of Policy
