Jenna Siteman, “Incarcerated individuals face extra risks during COVID-19 pandemic,” Michigan Daily (March 24, 2020). Excerpts:Nora Krinitsky, interim director of the Prison Creative Arts Project and director of the University of Michigan Carceral State Project, said one of the reasons the risk of contracting COVID-19 is so great for incarcerated individuals is due to their close quarters. Krinitsky cited an example of overcrowding in the Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility in Ypsilanti, which is the only women’s correctional facility in the state of Michigan. The facility currently houses more than 2,200 women but was built to house a capacity of only 1,100 inmates.
“If people are within proximity with one another and have the virus, the spread of it goes up exponentially,” Krinitsky said. “That is what people inside are facing because they cannot successfully socially distance (from) one another. So that means that we could see people become infected and ill, potentially almost wholesale, within a prison very quickly, meaning in a number of days.”
Krinitsky said many people develop underlying conditions while incarcerated due to the stressful environment and commonly inadequate health care. These conditions have been cited by the CDC to increase one’s chance of contracting the virus and could make fighting it off much more difficult.
“Healthcare in prisons is sometimes difficult to access and sometimes non-existent,” Krinitsky said. “It’s already the case that people who are inside or people who come home from prison often have really acute medical conditions or chronic conditions that they’re dealing with that have either been caused by their incarceration or exacerbated by their incarceration.”
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Krinitsky said releasing older people from prisons would alleviate a great deal of the population at risk, but that greater acts must be made to protect prisoners inside the facilities.
“The first step would be to release people from prison,” Krinitsky said. “That is the only step that would be truly effective in stopping the spread of the virus and protecting people’s health. The American Friends Service Committee circulated a letter in which they lay out very clearly why this is an important step to take, to release elderly prisoners and people who are medically vulnerable.”
Despite what has been done so far by the MDOC, Krinitsky said she feels more must be accomplished to salvage people’s health.
“The truth is, we know on the outside (of prison) that all people, regardless of your age or medical status, are vulnerable,” Krinitsky said. “So truly I know the MDOC has taken the steps of going into quarantine and doing special cleaning of prisons, but these are really half-measures.”
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Krinitsky said isolation can be destructive in a normal situation, current crisis climate aside. She said vulnerability in prisons is not highly rewarded, so individuals may be hesitant to share their symptoms with staff.
“In terms of people reporting their illnesses, trust and vulnerability in prisons is already incredibly precarious,” Krinitsky said. “Historically, there’s not really a lot of trust inside to know that if you report your illness, you’ll be taken care of. Also, the only option for someone to be isolated inside is to put them in a segregation unit, which is almost always taken as a punitive measure and we all know all of the destructive things that happen to someone when they’re segregated.”
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Krinitsky said she hopes people will appreciate the experience of individuals who are incarcerated.
“In my search for silver linings, one small consolation in this moment is that as we all experience isolation that is far less acute than the isolation people experience in prisons, that people might be able to develop their empathy for people who are inside,” Krinitsky said.
