Behind bars, coronavirus is in charge

Prison designs offer ideal environment for contagion

• Joseph Darius Jaafari
  BioRecent Stories

  

  Joseph Darius Jaafari was a staff writer for the PA Post. His work covering crime, the military and LGBTQ issues has been featured in The Marshall Project, Rolling Stone Magazine, The Atlantic and The New York Times. He is a graduate of the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, and an award-winning documentary filmmaker who has produced for VICE and The New York Post. He is a native Arizonan and infamous for his love of tacos.

Prisons were built with public safety in mind: Double rows of fences to narrow the chance of an escape; guards’ desks placed in places to give officers the ability to see all inmates on a cell block at one time; cells designed for utility, not comfort.

While those designs may be effective with keeping inmates away from the outside world, they were absolutely not built with public health in mind. In fact, the physical layout of prisons make them one of the worst places to be during the coronavirus pandemic.

For example, inmates’ cells in some county facilities are often surrounded by ventilation ducts. Inmates shout into the ducts to talk with each other. But that is an easy way for the virus to spread.

As Pa. Department of Corrections Secretary John Wetzel told me: “To the extent we can keep it out, we have some advantages. Once it gets in, those advantages turn to disadvantages.”

Before the pandemic, correctional facilities often lacked even basic medical necessities. As we reported in the past, inmates had dental exams seated in rolling office chairs, and even the most preventable conditions that could’ve been treated resulted in death.

So, using the only tool they have outside of releasing inmates en masse, jailers across multiple facilities at both the state and county levels have resorted to putting inmates into lockdown.

But more than just the structural issues is the instability of trying to keep inmates calm and cared for when you lock up two people together in a room no bigger than your bathroom for 23 hours each day.

The only way to solve this issue, health experts say, is to decarcerate — i.e. reduce the overall size of the prison population. But there seems to be little political appetite to do that.

You can read more about this topic in my latest story. —Joseph Darius Jaafari

Other state reads:

• Latest numbers: Pennsylvania had an increase of 1,245 positive COVID-19 cases, yesterday, bringing the state total to 27,735 total infections. Another 60 people died.

• The Philadelphia Inquirer: White House outlines coronavirus reopening guidelines, saying some states could resume normal operations ‘literally tomorrow’

• StatNews: Influential Covid-19 model uses flawed methods and shouldn’t guide U.S. policies, critics say

• Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Toomey, picked for Trump’s task force, supports reopening parts of economy ‘very soon’

• PennLive: ‘We certainly have bent that curve’: Pa. Health Secretary cites progress on coronavirus

• York Daily Record: Latinos in York City infected with COVID-19 at higher rate than others

• The Philadelphia Inquirer: Inside Philly’s ambitious plan to put caterers back to work serving the homeless 

• WESA: Pennsylvania To Use Liquor Stores For Online Fulfillment

• Spotlight PA: Desperate for cash, self-employed Pennsylvanians face high-stakes choice between loans and unemployment benefits 

• PennLive: The coronavirus curve continues to flatten in Pa., so why are masks required at stores starting Sunday night?

Pittsburgh small business leaders take note:

As part of its commitment to better connect experts in topics of urgent statewide importance to Pennsylvanians in all corners of the state, Spotlight PA will convene its first-ever virtual Q&A webinar focused on helping small businesses in Pittsburgh navigate the coronavirus shutdown.

Join the panel of experts from 10 to 11 a.m. this morning, as they discuss the resources available to small business owners and take your questions. The event will be held as a virtual webinar and will be free to all participants. There are limited slots available, so RSVP for this free event now.

Best of the rest

• “Oh, crap, the ukulele concert is going to be canceled”: Carnival cruise lines knew full well about the spread of COVID-19 and the threat it posed to its crew and customers — even after another of its cruise ships, the Diamond Princess, became the poster child for people keeping away from close quarters on the sea. Yet, they proceeded with business as usual. From Bloomberg, read the jaw dropping story here.

• Kicked to the curb: In direct violation of the CARES Act, which bars evictions temporarily while the nation handles the COVID-19 crisis, landlords are still filing for evictions in four states, ProPublica has found. The states include Georgia, Oklahoma, Texas and Florida. The project is an undertaking, as eviction filings are notoriously difficult to track and are kept often quiet. When notified about the investigation, many of the landlords revoked their evictions. But the investigation finds there’s no repercussions to landlords who violate the law.

• Isolation art: Banksy, the notorious and elusive graffiti artist (whose work I also have tattooed on me), has been busy in quarantine tagging up his own home. As The Guardian reports, isolation has been great for the art world in the past.  Related: A couch gag made for the time.

• “The answer is no”: For Vice, a list of questions and the most simple answer: “Can I go to the gym? Can I go to my friend’s place if we’ve both been at home for two weeks? Is it still OK to hold a baby shower at home for 30 people this weekend? Can’t I just run to the store to pick up some non-essential supplies so I can bake a pie? Is it OK to host a game night? Can I go for a walk with a buddy if we stay six feet apart? I’m sure it’s fine to go home to my parents’ house, right? The answer is no.”

NOT Coronavirus reads:

• Southern Poverty Law Center. Police: Proud Boys Used for Surveillance as Part of Violent Plot

• Vanity Fair. Murder at Sutton Place

• Longreads. All that Was Innocent and Violent: Girlhood in Post-Revolution Iran

• D Magazine. The Highland Park Drug Ring

• York Daily Record: Investigating history: That time Joe Biden’s dad lived and worked in York

---