Corridors of Contagion: How the Pandemic Exposed the Cruelties of Incarceration

Corridors of Contagion: How the Pandemic Exposed the Cruelties of Incarceration

by Victoria Law

That month, when Kwaneta and two other women were brought to an outside optometrist, guards refused to let them use the bathroom or even get a drink of water. The explanation? Lack of staff. The trip, which normally takes two hours, lasted six, during which the women remained in handcuffs and leg irons. When they finally returned to the prison, they had missed lunch. The guards told them to wait for dinner. When they begged for water, desperate after six hours in the Texas summer, the guards on duty told them, “We’re short staffed. We’ll give you water with dinner. Drink out of your sink.” As always, the sink water was tepid and tasted funny.

While they claimed to be too busy to distribute water, short staffing didn’t keep guards too busy to pull down the fabric that Kwaneta had hung over the window of her cell door so that she could change her soaked sanitary pad and soiled panties in private. “You can’t cover your door,” the guards scolded. But at least she’d had her long-awaited optometry appointment. Later, the prison canceled both her annual dental visit and the podiatry appointment for the foot pains she had been suffering since 2015. They also canceled the 2022 cardiology appointment that could have diagnosed and treated her recurring chest pains. Officials said that no guards were available to drive her to her appointments.

The term short staffing is a euphemism to divert attention from the state’s continued addiction to incarceration. “Words matter. It’s not too little staff, but too many people incarcerated,” Kwaneta reminded me. “If they released all the Q-tips [elderly white-haired women], then there would be someone to take me to my hospital appointments,” she told a guard who groused about the lack of staff. But instead of seeking ways to reduce its bloated prison population, Texas lawmakers continued with the “lock ’em up” policies of previous decades.

Beck VdlaRok / Unsplash

At the same time, lawmakers cut funding for these very same prisons where thousands continue to languish under the politicians’ continuing tough-on-crime zeal. In October 2022, Texas governor Greg Abbott announced that he was diverting nearly $360 million from the state’s prison budget to fund Operation Lone Star, his border-militarization project to station state troopers and National Guard members along the Texas-Mexico border.

Meanwhile, the state refused to significantly reduce its prison population. At the end of 2020, 121,128 people were confined in Texas prisons. One year later, at the end of 2021, the state prison population had fallen only slightly to 118,000, in large part because the pandemic had delayed sentencing and new admissions, not because lawmakers had decarcerated or repealed tough-on-crime measures. By 2022, prison numbers rose to nearly 122,000 people. Prisons, now more crowded than ever, continued many of the same careless practices that fueled earlier outbreaks.

In the spring of 2022, Mountain View staff confiscated masks, including Jack’s, during routine cell searches. “I expect us to go full blown infected very soon,” he predicted. That August, his prediction came true. Staff placed a person with Covid in the adjoining cell. Each cough—and there were many—made Jack cringe at the possibility of a virus-laden particle being propelled through the vent, into his cell, and into his lungs. Despite her positive status, the woman shouted at her neighbors through her door, projecting droplets into the hallway. Soon after, a second person who had tested positive for Covid was placed on Jack’s unit. The unit was locked down yet again for medical isolation.

To Jack, the placements made no sense. “They already had a dorm locked down for Covid,” he noted. “Why not put the two [positive] people there instead of down here with us?” In August 2023, staff once again placed a person with Covid on the unit and— once again—refused to distribute masks or take other precautions to prevent transmission. It was yet another example of lessons not learned from the prolonged pandemic.

Jack fervently hoped that the vaccine and boosters would keep him from contracting severe Covid. Staff had stopped masking altogether. Incarcerated people were brought to court and outside medical appointments while women from other prisons were brought, temporarily, to Mountain View for medical treatment. Every time he heard a person coughing, sneezing, or even clearing her throat, Jack worried that they had Covid—and that he would, once again, get sick. His fears were echoed by some of the nation’s public health experts. “In the US, Covid is still on pace to kill more than a hundred thousand people per year,” warned Dhruv Khullar, the physician and Weill Cornell Medical College professor. “Many of us share the reasonable worry that some future reinfection will be the one that causes longer-term harm to our health and quality of life.”

The 2022 study of veterans also suggested that those who have contracted Covid more than once are more likely to experience a range of medical problems, including heart attacks, strokes, breathing problems, kidney disorders, and mental health problems. They are twice as likely to die as those who have not been reinfected. Khullar cautioned that the study had not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal and that it drew from US veterans, many of whom are older men with multiple medical conditions. But many in prison—such as Malakki, Jack, Mary, and Kwaneta—are also aging and, even if they didn’t enter prison with multiple medical conditions, years of poor nutrition and even worse medical care have undoubtedly damaged their health.

While both veterans and people in prison have multiple health problems, experience a higher prevalence of mental illness, and face dysfunctional medical systems with lengthy waits, Kwaneta reminded me that veterans are able to reduce their potential exposure. In prisons, people who are not in segregation must attend assigned programs. The assignment might be a job paying pennies, an educational class, a self-help group, or some combination. “You can’t miss a day because you’re sick. You will be written a disciplinary ticket, which will cause a parole denial,” Kwaneta explained. “You’re forced to attend crowded groups, live in shared crowded spaces—all without social distancing or mask wearing.” Basically, the choice in prison boils down to one question: How badly do you want to go home?

Khullar lamented the public’s widespread discarding of common sense precautions such as masking, social distancing, and vaccinations, as well as policymakers’ unwillingness to fund robust testing and treatment programs, invest in public health infrastructure, support paid sick leave, and improve ventilation. “Has our battle with Covid-19 come to such a standstill that a slow burn of disruption, debility, and death will continue for years to come?” he asked. Inside prisons, the answer to that question seemed to be a resounding yes.

“The pandemic was an opportunity to reevaluate policies so that people who live and work in prisons can be safe,” reflected Kwaneta. “They didn’t.”

Excerpted from Corridors of Contagion: How the Pandemic Exposed the Cruelties of Incarceration © 2024, Victoria Law, Haymarket Books. Used by permission.

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Five executions are set to occur in just seven days across Alabama, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas—the most in one week in decades. [Sean Murphy / Associated Press]

Violent crime dropped again last year—and murder rates saw their biggest single-year decline in the last two decades, according to new FBI data. [Ryan J. Reilly and Ken Dilanian / NBC News]. Read more from The Appeal’s Ethan Corey on how FBI statistics can be manipulated for political purposes.

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At least 30 police departments now use artificial intelligence to review body cam footage and rate officers’ performances. The platform, Truleo, can cost tens of thousands of dollars each year. [Martin Kaste / NPR]

The NYPD gives the majority of jaywalking tickets in New York City to people of color. Fines cost up to $250. Some council members are trying to decriminalize jaywalking. [Ramsey Khalifeh / Gothamist]