Editorial: Every prison cell is now a coronavirus death row

[KY_EnviroGuy]

Editorial: Every prison cell is now a coronavirus death row
The LA Times Editorial Board (via MSN)

Link: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/editorial-every-prison-cell-is-now-a-coronavirus-death-row/ar-BB16OrR2

Excerpts:

San Quentin is California’s most famous, most picturesque, most aged, most poorly designed and most lethal state prison. Its parking lot, down the hill from twin gothic towers (built in the 1850s) and high walls, offers a stunning view of San Francisco Bay and the Bay Bridge — when not threatened by winter storm waves. The perspective is different inside the gates, where cellblocks surround an open atrium-like space designed to give guards a view of each inmate. With the windows to the outside closed off and with prisoners and guards all breathing the same poorly circulated air, it’s the perfect place to transmit a virus, quickly and mercilessly. In such an environment, social distancing is irrelevant.

In other words, it's not a good place to send inmates to shield them from COVID-19.

This was going to happen, one way or another. Prisons, like cruise ships and nursing homes, are virus breeding grounds and human death traps. Two thirds of inmates at the federal prison at Terminal Island, across the shipping channel from San Pedro, were infected by May. Nearly 70% of inmates at the federal prison in Lompoc tested positive. COVID-19 infections ripped through prisons in New York, Chicago, Ohio. California’s 35 state prisons suffered just a few infections, but were living and breathing on borrowed time.

The only way to decrease the risk is to decrease the inmate population, and the state made only the most modest effort at that earlier this year, halting new admissions for a few weeks and moving up the departure dates slightly for about 3,500 home-bound prisoners.

This is a horrific problem nation-wide and prisoners in city and county jails and state and federal prisons have almost no voice unless they have connections to wealth. Those who are highly vulnerable - the elderly, immunocompromised persons and pregnant women for example - should be released or otherwise isolated.

I wonder if there are charities that provide support for troubled prisoners or that are advocates for prisoner human rights.....

KY

[mucifer]

1. It takes a lot of work. But, fighting the virus in jail can be done. In Chicago the numbers with a

good plan :
New CDC review finds Cook County sheriff, staff successfully stemmed rising tide of COVID-19 cases at jail (Cook County is Chicago)

Earlier in the pandemic, the jail had “one of the largest outbreaks of COVID-19 in a congregate setting described to date,” according to the document.

But after expanded testing, mask-wearing, limiting detainee movement and opening up previously unused buildings to allow for greater distancing, the spread within the jail slowed down significantly compared with Chicago at large, the paper said.

Even to an outsider’s eye, however, the drop in COVID-19 cases at the jail is significant. In March and April, the jail counted more than 900 cases among detainees and staffers, and seven detainees died at local hospitals after testing positive.

Detainees are tested upon intake, kept separate from the general population for two weeks and tested again before moving to a regular tier, said Dr. Chad Zawitz, lead physician for infectious diseases at the jail and one of the paper’s authors.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/coronavirus/ct-coronavirus-cdc-cook-county-jail-study-20200715-or4zoyranzf2dmg5fz6wzhwgem-story.html