Living Hell

 

If prison life in the United States were hell before COVID, it’s gone significantly downhill from there. If the supply chain disruption is bad for most of us, it is intolerably worse for America’s prisoners. Fetid food – as discussed in my January 24th Yet Another American Human Rights Failure blog – was heaped on the fact that prison officers don’t run our prisons, gangs do. And as for those prison guards themselves, so many have resisted getting vaccinated or wearing masks that they have become super-spreaders to an overcrowded community of incarcerated humans who have no place to go to avoid infection. The problem, of course, is two-fold: prison administrations allowing guards to work without vaccinations or masks and the general proclivity of Americans to write off the value of prisoners as human beings.

Indeed, we seem to be going out of our way to make prison life so much worse than it has ever been in the modern era, so much worse than simple and inexpensive accommodations might prevent. If we think it does not matter, remember taxpayers pick up the check for overtime and extra shifts when prison guards take ill and cannot come to work… and when some of those guards come to work anyway, explosively spreading a constantly mutating virus. Including to the surrounding communities. Even for prisoners who have been vaccinated, exposure to still contagious, albeit less deadly, COVID breakthrough infections has produced so many more infections.

The unfortunate power of union contributions to political campaigns, more a boon to Democrats than Republicans, has produced a particularly unpleasant reality in blue California’s prison system, not atypical from the conditions in other penitentiaries around the country. On February 1st, the Los Angeles Times published an OpEd from a very qualified jurist, Hadar Aviram, professor at UC Hastings College of the Law. Here is an excerpt:

“Staff moving freely in and out of these facilities have been agents of contagion in prisons and their surrounding communities. Data that I collected with independent researcher Chad Goerzen, as well as a report published by the Prison Policy Initiative in December 2020, show considerable correlations between prison COVID-19 spikes and outbreaks in nearby counties and indicate that staff are primary drivers of this trend. And despite all these risks, they still are not required to get vaccinated.

“After the federal receiver in charge of California’s correctional healthcare system pleaded for a vaccine requirement, U.S. District Judge John Tigar finally ordered one in September — only for Gov. Gavin Newsom, otherwise a staunch vaccine supporter [but caught maskless at the Rams-49er game], to side with the corrections department and the guards’ union in opposing the mandate. Their appeal is still pending with the 9th Circuit, and at this point there is no general requirement that prison staff become vaccinated.

“The main concern of opponents of the mandate is that it might lead to mass resignations of guards, which in turn would result in understaffed, unsafe prisons. Yet in other sectors with mandates, such as schools and government offices, vocal protestations and resignation threats gave way to vaccination compliance. Indeed, the opponents’ rejection of a vaccine mandate is creating the reality they warned of: As of last week, 21 prisons each had more than 100 infected staff members, who then could not safely show up for work.

“The irony of the situation might be lost on prison authorities, but it has an even darker side. Even if the threat of correctional officers’ resignations over a mandate were real, and graver than the very real staffing problems generated by the spike in staff cases, why do government officials so stubbornly support overcrowded prisons? Exposing incarcerated people to a serious virus with no means to protect themselves from unvaccinated staff members — amid other health order violations in prisons, per multiple reports — violates their 8th Amendment rights [against cruel and unusual punishment].”

So, if prison guard absenteeism has exploded, what exactly is the argument that we might lose staffers? And what happens if prisoners (or their families) file wrongful death or inhumane treatment lawsuits against governmental bodies? We are used to paying for pain and suffering in tort cases. Wasted money. We also seem addicted to putting too many offenders in prison for particularly long sentences. With 4% of the world’s population, how do we justify holding 25% of the world’s prison population?

“Ultimately, to protect California’s prison populations and everyone in surrounding counties, not only from this pandemic but from others in the future, we need to confront the larger truth: If it is impossible to retain enough correctional staff to provide proper care for our incarcerated population, then we cannot incarcerate as many people as we do.” Aviram.

It seems that the guards we have can’t do their jobs anyway. For example, recently, “The federal prison system has been placed on a [rare] nationwide lockdown after two inmates were killed and two others were injured Monday [1/31] during a gang altercation at a federal penitentiary in Texas…

“The attack is just the latest example of serious violence within the beleaguered federal Bureau of Prisons. The agency has struggled through a multitude of crises in recent years, including widespread staffing shortages, serious employee misconduct, a series of escapes and deaths.

“The lockdown, being instituted at the agency's more than 120 federal prisons across the U.S., was prompted by fears of potential retaliation and concern violence could spread to other facilities. During a nationwide lockdown, inmates are kept in their cells most of the day and visiting is canceled. Because of a spike in coronavirus cases in federal prisons, social visits at nearly every facility have been canceled already…

“There have been a number of serious security issues within the federal prison system in the last few months, including several inmate deaths and stabbings. The Justice Department announced earlier this month that the agency's director, Michael Carvajal, was resigning from his position amid increased scrutiny over his leadership and in the wake of Associated Press reporting that uncovered widespread corruption, misconduct and other problems at the agency.” Associated Press, February 1st. 

The list of things that the government does not seem to be able to handle, from public education, immigration and infrastructure to criminal justice and voting rights, is growing longer by the day. Congressional gridlock, devoid of meaningful accountability, is moving a once-great nation into the abyss of a failed state.

I’m Peter Dekom, and what government does seem good at is wasting taxpayer money, inflicting suffering, deferring maintenance until it collapses and failing to hold those accountable for major harm who simply have the requisite political power to live outside the rules.