WiNK

The coronavirus pandemic has impacted people all around the world. I wondered, do people think much about how the coronavirus is affecting prisons and the inmates serving time there?

When most people think of prisons, they think of being in a 8x12 jail cell all day, but as an inmate you go to various different locations around the prison, such as the courtyard, outside in the yards with other inmates and the areas where visitors come to talk to you.

Many people believe that "if you are in a cell all day you have little to no human interaction," which is wrong. People are not socially distancing in prisons like you might think. The guards check on inmates all day long and you never know where that guard has been outside his job in the prison. Inmates also consume their food in a cafeteria full of other inmates. The seats are tightly packed, with side by side bench seating.

Now, with COVID-19, inmates are forced to socially distance from one and another. The virus has changed the way the prisons are operated from a medical standpoint. COVID-19 is on the rise in prisons everywhere but particularly in prisons that are located in or right next to major cities. For example, Rikers Island Jail in New York City, San Quentin Prison in California, and Suffolk County House of Corrections in Boston, are all located in major cities where coronavirus cases in the beginning were quite large.

If an inmate contracted the virus that inmate was forced to leave the prison and seek medical care from nearby hospitals and once testing negative for COVID, they were sent back to prison to finish their sentence. Prisons like Rikers Island can hold up to about 15,000 inmates. With a prison population this large, if one person gets COVID, the number of cases can explode.

This places a great strain on how jails are run. In the beginning when hospitals were so overrun, prisons across 12 states were transformed into COVID-only prisons or prisons for people who have underlying health conditions and are at risk for the virus.

A men's prison in California by the name of Chino has over 600 Coronavirus cases and 10 deaths so far. That is only in one prison in a state that has 40 million people; imagine what that could be like in other states that have thousands of people in their city prisons. Coronavirus has made life extra hard everywhere but especially for the people who work in prisons/jails who are deemed as essential.

In conclusion, it is clear that the COVID-19 crisis has made the operation of prisons and life as an inmate even harder.