After decades of being forced to eat breakfast at 5:15 am or not at all, the fact that it’s now sometime after 6 am leaves Wesley’s stomach in knots. Lunch these days is served at 10:45 am, dinner at 2:30 pm, realities he mostly tries not to think about.

For those of us who’ve spent decades in prison—often our whole adult lives—our circadian rhythms have long since been set by the state. We knew three hours had passed when it was time for head counts, conducted at monastic hours of prayer: midnight, 3 am, 6 am, 9 am, noon, 3 pm, 6 pm, 9 pm. Census counts, which are separate, were 8 am, 10 am, 1pm, and 4 pm. Laundry went out at 6 am was returned at 4 pm. TVs came on at 5 am and turned off at 7 am; then back on at 5 pm and back off at 11 pm. Or 1 am, if it was a holiday or weekend.

Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit. COs quit en masse. Schedules were abandoned. And three years later, nothing’s really replaced them. It’s left the old-timers adrift, unable to get our bearings or process how we’re supposed to pass the time.

We hate the rigid schedules, but we also cling to them. After a few decades of institutionalization being grafted over where free will used to be, these routines bring us meaning and order. If they don’t mark the passage of time, nothing does.

“Everywhere I go the clocks have a different time displayed,” Ward*, incarcerated for nearly four decades, told Filter. “For so many years it was important to be early, as on time was late and late was punishable. Now, I can’t tell if I’m late or early, and have difficulty accepting that it no longer matters.”

“What I am experiencing now,” Ward said, “is what I feared freedom would feel like.”

“The pandemic killed ‘official’ order inside prisons,” Wilkie*, 60, told Filter. “The abandonment of time and place has disoriented the institutionalized … It is chaos.”

In the absence of supervision, many of us continue to go to our daily work assignments. Trash is picked up, meals cooked, trucks unloaded, warehouse orders placed, by thousands upon thousands of people going through the motions of forced labor because they’re at a loss for what else to do.

“What I am experiencing now,” Ward said, “is what I feared freedom would feel like. Only, not the fear of failing to be a ‘successful’ parolee. Nor the fear of returning to prison, to start over again at the bottom of all the ladders. Now, without the schedule … the ’safe at home base’ assurance is gone.”

Group movements, when doors and gates are unlocked for 15-minute intervals so prisoners can shuffle from their assigned location to their next assigned location, no longer exist. Before COVID, if you needed to go from, say, your cell to your job, you had to do it at 7:45 am. If you missed movement, you had to wait until 9:45 am. Then 11:45 am; 12:45 pm; 3:45 pm; and 5:45 pm.

“There’s no structure to anything. It’s maddening.”

These days, head counts are arbitrary occurrences that a few COs do when needed for the sake of appearances. Prisoners and supervisors alike show up to work at random times that correspond to no known schedule, and leave the same way.

“The doors and interior gates stay unlocked. The TVs stay on 24/7. Laundry goes out whenever or not at all, and returned to the living unit whenever or not at all,” Wesley told Filter. “There’s no structure to anything. It’s maddening.”

Wesley tries to maintain a routine as best he can. He still gets up at 4:30 em each morning, to drink a cup of coffee and watch BBC until 5:30 am. At 7:45 am he goes out to the yard to watch the migrating flocks of geese; they always eat breakfast at the same time every day.

Around noon he’ll turn to some art projects, and hopefully exhaust himself trying to make the day pass. At midnight he’ll go back to bed.

Some of the old-timers cope with drugs or alcohol, or smoking as many cigarettes as they can afford. Some didn’t even smoke before the pandemic, but now have frayed nerves sufficient to have picked up the habit later in life. Some have reputations that protected them during periods of disorientation; some don’t. Many become statistics, one data point among hundreds showing the rates of murders and suicides climbing higher.

“My catastrophic thinking sees only the historical worst of outcomes for the prisoners,” Wilkie said. But “the atmosphere is one of, ‘It’s not going to matter very much longer anyway.’”

Photograph via Iowa Department of Corrections

*Names changed to protect sources.

The post Prison Routines Have Fallen Apart, Leaving Old-Timers Adrift appeared first on Filter.

Rapid antibody testing, which might otherwise be considered one of the more innocuous COVID precautions, gets the most visceral reaction because in here, it creates more harm than it reduces.

In prison, lockdowns are literal. During the pandemic we were locked inside our tiers 23 hours a day, with a one-hour allowance for outside recreation. No visitors. No volunteers. No educational or recreational programming. No ice, which is a critical resource during the summers; ice machines are located outside the tier. Food was brought to us, cold and soggy in Styrofoam clamshells. No contact with staff, except for when they put on PPE to bring the soggy food or sometimes pass out mail.

Constant testing did nothing to reduce COVID transmission, but it was very effective at reducing everything else. From a few weeks into the pandemic through the end of 2022, each time one of us tested positive, staff would pack us off to the quarantine unit. We’d be locked in there with a bunch of other people who’d also tested positive, until we tested negative. No TV. No radio. No books. We had the option of making one 20-minute phone call each day, during the same 20-minute window when we had the option of taking a shower. 

We lived like this for more than two years.

In the meantime, staff would place our tier on isolation and test everyone a few at a time, and accordingly disappear them into quarantine a few at a time. The whole tier—30 cells, each housing two people—would of course ultimately test positive, but this would take about two weeks, during which time the people in quarantine would start testing negative and being brought back to the tier.

We lived like this for more than two years. Either we were in isolation or we were in quarantine, except when being shuffled from one to the other. Then, in late 2022, prisoners in Airway Heights Corrections Center changed the game. Instead of complying with orders to get tested, many of them signed the form that releases Washington State Department of Corrections from liability when someone in its custody refuses a treatment or procedure against medical advice. Word spread to other facilities.

Now that COVID is not longer classified as a public health emergency, we’ve been assured that, no matter what happens next, it won’t be a return to lockdown protocols. But most of us in WCC were more harmed by the way COVID precautions were enforced than we were by COVID, and because of that we haven’t spent too much time evaluating the merits of each precaution individually. People do not intend to get tested, and they also do not intend to get vaccinated.

The main thing actively driving vaccine hesitancy in here is toxic masculinity.

Vaccine hesitancy in prison is rooted in the same distrust of government and medical institutions as it is on the outside. But the main thing actively driving it is essentially toxic masculinity. In prison culture especially, that tends to mutually reinforce an overdeveloped sense of confidence, to cover an overdeveloped fear of being perceived as weak.

Everyone here got COVID, but not everyone got sick. Getting sick, and by extension getting a vaccine that meant acknowledging the possibility you could get sick, is a sign of weakness. That’s not something you want to show in prison.

I’ve had COVID four times, but I only got sick twice, and of those two times one still wasn’t that bad. The other was bad. Aside from the fever and sweats and chills, what I remember most is a feeling like my lungs were filled with molasses.

Unlike most people on my tier, I was vaccinated at the time. After that, I stopped getting the shots. Why bother?

The irony lost on me until recently is that I’ve been living with HIV for more than 30 years, and I’ve talked to so many people about the importance of mitigating viral transmission that people knew me as “the AIDS Guy,” and they meant that with a certain level of respect. But I’m not much more immune to toxic masculinity than I am to COVID, and I just hadn’t been thinking about the vaccine that way.

Now that COVID has returned to the living units, I requested an appointment to get vaccinated again. Since making that decision, I’ve also started talking to the guys on my tier about why testing and vaccination in this context are separate things. One is used here to increase harm, the other to reduce it.

Photograph via Minnesota Department of Corrections

The post COVID Testing in Our Prison Has Been Used to Harm, Not Help appeared first on Filter.

These days, we’re kept in “rolling lockdowns” where half the living unit—either Pod A or Pod B—is confined to their cells at a time. Each pod houses 128 prisoners, and there used to be one guard per pod. For the past four months or so, there’s only been one guard, who is supposed to be in two places at once. So, the pods take turns on lockdown. If there’s a shakedown coming too, we know the situation is about to become much worse.

By 7 a.m. our water is shut off. Though we’re housed in two-person cells, a more accurate description would be to say my cellee and I live in a small bathroom. By 9:30 a.m., the electricity is shut off—now we live in an open sewer.

The outside temperature is in the 90s. We sprinkle baby powder around the room, and try to pretend it covers the rising stench as the contents of everyone’s unflushed toilets start to bake.

We have no contraband, but dread creeps in as we wait facing the wall. We know our belongings are being destroyed.

The shakedown crew arrives, around 20 officers dressed in all black and carrying pepper spray and tasers. They extract us from our cells a few at a time. I’m on the top floor, so I get to watch them work their way up for a while before it’s my turn. We all know the routine by heart: Wait for handcuffs to be removed; strip naked; lift genitals; spread cheeks; squat; cough. They inspect your asshole to see if anything looks unusual. Then you’re handcuffed once more, walked to a different part of the unit and made to sit on the floor facing the wall. No talking. No looking up. Head down at all times.

My cellee and I have no contraband for the shakedown crew to find, but that never eases the dread that creeps over us as we wait facing the wall. We know our belongings are being destroyed; it’s just a matter of how thoroughly.

When we’re allowed to return to our cell, we survey the damage in silence. Papers, letters, pictures of loved ones, books we’d bought; all thrown to the floor, soggy from the water that’s flooded the cell because our ice chests melted after the power was shut off. Some cookies and Tylenol I’d bought from commissary are floating in the toilet. I’ll have to fish them out before the water comes back on, otherwise we’ll never get the toilet unclogged. My cellee sinks down on the wet floor and begins to weep; the shakedown crew broke his guitar.

Without enough security officers, shakedowns fall to whatever staff are available—teachers; secretaries.

SCCF is a private prison operated by CoreCivic, the company contracted by the Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC). Private contractors are notorious for endangering prisoners in their relentless bids to cut costs however they can; CoreCivic is no exception.

Twice a year, we have mandated facility-wide shakedowns where every cell gets tossed. These shakedowns are when a lot of personal belongings are lost, especially at CoreCivic facilities. There aren’t enough security officers left to do the job, so it falls to whatever staff are available—teachers; secretaries. They don’t have any security training, and often don’t know what’s legal property and what’s contraband, so they just toss everything.

“Even though nation-wide, correctional agencies, both public and private, have faced staffing challenges, CoreCivic works to meet or exceed our daily staffing patterns, which…are reviewed and approved by our government partners at the Tennessee Department of Correction,” CoreCivic Public Affairs Manager Brian Todd told Filter. “It is also important to know that any decision to place the facility on lockdown is made in consultation with our government partner, the Tennessee Department of Correction.”

TDOC told Filter that inquiries about SCCF should be directed to CoreCivic.

The worst shakedowns, the most destructive and cruel, come after a prisoner assaults an officer. When such incidents occur, we might not have food or running water for days.

“CoreCivic proudly serves three nutritious meals every day to everyone in our care at South Central Correctional Center,” Todd said. “We strongly deny any allegation about withholding food or water.”

We take turns washing ourselves in the sink, and try to clean the sewage from the walls and floor.

Breakfast was a bologna sandwich and a saltine cracker, followed by a cheese sandwich and saltine cracker about 12 hours later. My cellee and I aren’t hungry. At 9:30 p.m., the water and power come back on. We take turns washing ourselves in the sink, and try to clean some of the sewage from the walls and floor. Once there’s nothing more we can do, we climb into our bunks and wonder if we’ll do the same thing tomorrow.

Not all lockdowns involve shakedowns, but there’s still a shakedown at least once a week. Someone overdoses, or a drone drops a contraband delivery into the yard, or a group of prisoners gathers in such a way as to be suspected of “gang activity.” Whatever pretext can be used to keep us confined to our small bathrooms, rather than pay to keep the facility staffed.

Photograph of Trousdale Turner Correctional Center, another CoreCivic-operated facility in Tennessee, via State of Wyoming Legislature

The post COVID Left Our Private Prison With a New Normal: “Rolling Lockdowns” appeared first on Filter.

Ward’s tenure as GDC commissioner was appalling. He oversaw an understaffing crisis that resulted in unprecedented homicide and suicide rates, and then their investigation by the Department of Justice. He abandoned vulnerable prisoners—disabled, older, LGBTQ—to gang violence and medical neglect. Many are currently homeless, inside prison, because solitary confinement is a luxury now. He stood back as a new drug supply took hold of the system. He never pushed for conditional releases or meaningful decarceration, even when COVID took hold.

But his legacy goes beyond willful neglect. It is defined by a vehement war on transparency, one that should have disqualified him from a lateral move to a job granting pardons and paroles, and commuting death sentences. The Board did not comment on the reasons for Ward’s transition, other than to say he was appointed by the Governor.

COVID

Per UCLA Law’s COVID-19 Behind Bars Data Project, in September 2021 the COVID fatality rate in Georgia’s prison system was 2.4 percent—nearly three-and-a-half times the national average, and second only to Alabama’s. But Alabama’s COVID data were public.

GDC hasn’t publicized COVID testing or fatality rates since March 2021—before the Delta variant. That July, the department announced that its successful response made such reporting no longer necessary.

Speaking before the Georgia House Committee on Crisis in Prisons, UCLA data scientist Hope Johnson said GDC’s deliberate removal of transparency mechanisms was “almost certainly” concealing a higher fatality rate. It’s not as if prisoners stopped dying; GDC just stopped acknowledging them.

“[R]ather than improving the quality of their publicly reported data, the GDC has stopped reporting COVID-19 data altogether, making unfounded claims about the high rates of vaccination inside their facilities and among staff,” Johnson testified. “The culture of secrecy and resistance to oversight at the Georgia Department of Corrections presents a significant threat to public health and safety.”

Timothy Ward

Understaffing

GDC was facing an understaffing crisis since before Ward became commissioner in 2019, but the onset of the pandemic changed everything. Seemingly overnight, prisoners found themselves with just a handful of guards spread across their entire facility—fewer on nights and weekends. Since 2020, homicides inside GDC facilities have tripled.

Prisoners and their loved ones began pleading with Ward to call in the Georgia National Guard (GNG). The return of security personnel could mean the return of emergency medical services and transport to medical appointments, and above all a reduction in homicides and suicides.

GDC is not the only prison system to experience staffing shortages during the pandemic. States like Ohio, Florida, Montana, Indiana, Idaho, New Hampshire and South Carolina have brought in National Guard officers for exactly this reason.

“He acted as if the very suggestion was ludicrous.”

After Governer Brian Kemp deployed the GNG in Atlanta in March 2020, prison reform nonprofit Ignite Justice made several appeals to do the same within GDC. They went unanswered. In 2021, Ignite Justice Founder Emily Shelton raised the issue with Ward in person and recalls being assured “things are well in hand” and that activists need not concern themselves.

“He told me it was something he wouldn’t even consider,” Shelton told Filter. “He acted as if the very suggestion was ludicrous, and he rejected my organization’s detailed suggestions.”

In September 2021, GDC watchdog group They Have No Voice (THNV) called on Kemp and Ward to bring in GNG in a letter bearing 2,200 signatures. It, too, went unanswered.

At a GDC budget hearing in January 2022, Ward briefly acknowledged a staggering 49-percent turnover rate among new hires within their first year. THNV Founder Susan Sparks-Burns attempted, as Shelton had, to speak to Ward about deploying GNG. She too recounts Ward responding by telling her it was not up for consideration.

“COVID, homicide, suicide—all manners of death continued to rise,” Sparks-Burns told Filter. “I put that responsibility directly at the feet of Tim Ward.”

Low salaries don’t fully account for the turnover. Since the beginning of the pandemic, approximately 200 GDC employees have been arrested on work-related charges. At least 30 were arrested for battery or sexual assault. The majority have been corrections officers certified by the Georgia Peace Officers Standards and Training Council, which Ward continues to oversee.

Ward has been succeeded as Commissioner by Tyrone Oliver, the former head of the Department of Juvenile Justice and Department of Corrections who, in 2020, oversaw a 97-percent turnover rate.  Two years later, well after the raises Oliver had claimed would fix things, the turnover rate was 90 percent. Oliver told state legislators in January 2022 that things were “trending in the right direction,” despite telling the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that same week that “we typically lose [most] officers before they get through the academy.”

Evasion and Obstruction

Since 2016, the Department of Justice has been investigating GDC’s failure to protect LGBTQ prisoners from recurring sexual and physical assaults by prisoners as well as staff. In September 2021, DOJ expanded its scope in response to the crisis of rising homicide and suicide rates.

Between May 2017 and December 2020, GDC issued at least 40 “Inmate Death Under Investigation” press releases. It no longer does this, forcing news outlets, watchdog groups and the federal government alike to litigate for vital information that should already be publicly available.

Ward simply continued to insist that GDC had many objections, but would not reveal what they were.

After first unlawfully—and unnecessarily—sending DOJ documents containing prisoners’ private medical records, GDC decided it wasn’t fair for DOJ to request documentation of prisoner deaths, and that it would only cooperate if the federal government signed an NDA. Meanwhile, GDC administrators were busy preventing site visits by media and lawmakers.

After he was served by DOJ, Ward filed for a protective order in an attempt to get out of handing over the subpoenaed documents.

Ward has insisted throughout the process that DOJ’s requests are too burdensome for an understaffed department like GDC. It’s telling that DOJ made repeated attempts to accommodate GDC’s lack of resources, even offering to lend its own personnel to help compile the documents, and GDC either rejected or ignored all of them. Ward simply continued to insist that GDC had many objections, but would not reveal what they were.

Perhaps Ward’s new position will suit him.

The five-member State Board of Pardons and Paroles is an entity unburdened by much oversight. Prisoners eligible for parole will wait years for their review, only to be told that, “due to the severity of your crime,” they had not served yet enough time. Years later, following their next review, they will be told the same thing again.

The Board does not conduct parole hearings. It’s not just that prisoners aren’t entitled to parole—they’re not entitled to any contact with the Board, to be able to view their own parole file, to any explanation for why they were denied parole or to any appeal of the decision. Perhaps Ward’s new position will suit him.

Top photograph via Pennsylvania Department of Corrections. Inset image of Timothy Ward via Georgia Department of Corrections.

The post Among Georgia Prison Leadership, a Deepening War On Transparency appeared first on Filter.

Since the pandemic began, COVID lockdowns have been used to effectively suspend GRE. For the past two years, Washington prisons have been subjected to almost nonstop COVID outbreaks. Those of us incarcerated here have spent most of that time on lockdown, confined almost exclusively to our cells. Educational and rehabilitative programming has all been put on hold—programming that many of us are required to participate in as conditions of approval for GRE.

Some prisoners who have served more than a year can become eligible for partial confinement in work-release settings in the final 12 months of their sentences, and home detention in the final five months.

I’ve been incarcerated for more than seven years, and am slated for release in April 2023. In December 2021, I learned that I was approved for a GRE pathway that would allow me to transfer to a work-release facility in April 2022, then spend my last five months of confinement on house arrest.

But in order to enroll, I have to first complete a “Chemical Dependency Treatment” course, apparently because of three DUI charges I incurred nearly 20 years ago.

The person who conducted my chemical dependency evaluation told me that I didn’t seem to have a substance use disorder. At first, I panicked: Great. I won’t even be able to get into the course. But she recommended me anyway, stating that my past “criminal behavior” was similar to “using behavior.”

No one on a wait list could enroll, and no one already in a program could graduate.

Because of COVID restrictions, those of us incarcerated here in Monroe Correctional Complex are only able to attend classes with people from our same living unit, which means the chemical dependency class allows just six of us at a time.

The course would take three months. My GRE eligibility was already less than three months away. I explained my situation to the instructor in early January, asking to be admitted into the class as soon as possible.

She informed me that prisoners with court orders for treatment had priority over me, but I was sixth on the wait list. After some back-and-forth exchanges, I was up to third; I’m not sure whether this was because of my persistence or if people had just graduated and made room. This meant I’d likely finish a month or two past my eligibility date. It wasn’t ideal, but I could live with it.

Then, on January 7, my living unit went back into quarantine—one of my neighbors had tested positive for COVID. All classes were suspended. No one on a wait list could enroll, and no one already in a program could graduate.

Of the roughly two dozen people I’ve spoken to who have applied for GRE, all told me they had to take chemical dependency before they could be approved. Like me, many are here on non-drug related convictions and do not have a substance use disorder. Many of them were given no explanation for why they needed to take the class.

Prisoners who participate in educational programming are significantly less likely to be reincarcerated once released. Many here signed up for college courses under the impression that they would graduate with degrees that could help them find jobs upon release, yet likely won’t be able to complete them during their sentence.

Why isn’t the DOC providing correspondence packets?

The majority of my incarcerated neighbors who contracted the Omicron variant in recent weeks were at least double-vaccinated. In an environment like this, there’s no way to stave off outbreaks for any extended period. If education and rehabilitative courses are prerequisites for allowing those of us at the tail ends of our sentences to leave this place, reducing both COVID and mass incarceration, there’s no valid reason they couldn’t proceed with a few simple accommodations.

The chemical dependency curriculum is based on a packet of written materials. Why can’t the DOC give these packets to prisoners to complete from their cells? (DOC did not provide Filter with an answer by publication time.)

In mid-February, some programs resumed. However, during the outbreak, additional prisoners were transferred in (none were transferred out, though some were released). Many of those brought in likely have court orders to take chemical dependency course—it’s very common—so it could be that I’ve been moved back down the wait list once again. My work release eligibility is six weeks away, and there’s no telling when I’ll be allowed to start the 12-week course I’m required to complete beforehand.

GRE was supposedly designed for people like me. People who have stayed out of trouble in prison and used their time productively. People who need the opportunity to acclimatize back into society in such a way that allows us to land on our feet, once we’re finally released.

If we can’t access these programs, at a time when it’s never been more urgent for prisons to reduce overcrowding, then why do they exist?

Photograph via Pixabay

The post WA Prisons Expanded Gradual Reentry. COVID Is an Excuse to Block Us. appeared first on Filter.

The BOP, an agency under the Department of Justice (DOJ), oversees a national system of prisons and detention centers for people accused of or convicted on federal charges. More than 135,000 people are currently in BOP custody. The Trump administration appointed Carvajal director in 2020, and President Biden retained him in the role.

In November 2021, the Associated Press reported widespread arrests and convictions among BOP staff, which the agency often did not investigate. The allegations included murder, coerced sex, bribery and smuggling illicit drugs and guns into BOP facilities. 

Carvajal spent three decades in the agency. He will remain director until a successor is in place, the timeline for which is unclear.

Under Carvajal, the BOP has also faced Congressional investigation and lawsuits over COVID precautions. To date, BOP has reported 275 prisoners and seven staff members who have died from COVID. Nearly 42,000 prisoners and nearly 8,900 staff members have tested positive and recovered.

“People in prison are really reluctant to file grievances because of a fear they’ll suffer retaliation from prison staff.”

“We’ve heard problems from day one from family members about widespread outbreaks, not being quarantined, not being isolated, not getting the proper sanitation materials that they needed,” Molly Gill, vice president of policy at Families Against Mandatory Minimums, told Filter. “People sleeping next to people who were very, very ill and just waiting to get ill themselves.”

During the pandemic, prisoners in BOP facilities have faced severe overcrowding with little or no ability to isolate, medical requests ignored for months and retaliation for protesting.

“Each prison facility is its own sort of fiefdom,” Gill said. “There’s not a lot of consistency across the system about how facilities are run. People in prison are really reluctant to file grievances because of a fear they’ll suffer retaliation from prison staff.”

The BOP also has no dedicated independent watchdog agency. The DOJ’s Office of Inspector General (OIG DOJ) is responsible for investigating the BOP, but it’s also busy with other agencies like the FBI and the DEA.

“What really needs to happen is independent oversight of this agency,” said Gill. A new entity needs to be established, with “the power to walk into a facility at any time and do an inspection.”

“They are married to a culture that is corrupt and tainted and needs to be changed.”

Kara Gotsch, deputy director at The Sentencing Project, noted the BOP has routinely failed to comply with investigations by both OIG DOJ and Congress, which also oversees it. The abuses didn’t start with Carvajal, and won’t end after he’s gone.

“The BOP hires and promotes from within,” Gotsch told Filter. “Those are folks who literally grew up in that agency and have worked there almost their entire careers. That, to me, is part of the problem—they are married to a culture that is corrupt and tainted and needs to be changed.”

She hopes that Carvajal’s successor will have a track records of improving conditions for prisoners. She identified the highest priority as reducing the prison population.

“With legislation we can do a lot,” she said. “Ending mandatory minimums, capping sentences at 20 years, second look at 10 years—there are a lot of legislative opportunities that Congress absolutely could enact.”

Photograph via United States Senator Dick Durbin

The post Federal Prisons Director to Resign Amid Staff Corruption, COVID Failures appeared first on Filter.

The paper, published independently online, details a general lack of transparency over vaccination rates in prisons and highlights how governments and policymakers have failed to adequately vaccinate incarcerated people, even though they stand as one of the most at-risk groups.

“The absence of information available and accessible from official sources on vaccination plans and roll-out in prisons is in violation of the right to health,” the authors write. “Failure to provide transparent information impedes an accurate assessment by government authorities, the healthcare service, and civil society of the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of government responses to COVID-19 in prisons.”

Broadly speaking, the authors divided global responses into four distinct categories. Those are jurisdictions that have: “explicitly prioritized prisons, including prison populations as a higher-risk group;” “included prisons within plans or roll-out, but not as a (high) priority group;” provided “equivalence for prison populations or staff with the group that individuals would fall within in the community; and “not specifically referred to prisons, prison populations, or staff at all in national vaccination programs.”

“Only 20 countries had provided at least 80 percent of their prison population with at least one dose of the vaccine.”

The authors acknowledge that some information, of course, was difficult to ascertain. But the analysis, culled from a mix of “press releases, civil society reports, responses from international organizations, and news reports,” determined that only 56 of the 131 countries for which there was reasonable data “explicitly mention people in prison.” Of those just 51—or 39 percent of available national vaccination plans—gave some priority to vaccinating people in prison against COVID.

As of September 2021,” the report also notes, “available figures indicate that only 20 countries had provided at least 80 percent of their prison population with at least one dose of the vaccine.” They include one country in Africa, two in Central and South America, nine in Asia and eight in Europe. The United States, where many public health policies are determined at state level, was not part of this group.

Vaccinating people in prison has been a contentious debate in the US since the onset of COVID, even though countless health departments have emphasized its importance. Federal, state and local authorities are now pushing for vaccine mandates for corrections officers—some of whom have taken to the streets to protest the requirements. Jurisdictions are not, however, pushing for vaccinations for the incarcerated population. Though some states have previously introduced measures to encourage people in prison to get vaccinated, case rates in US prisons have been four-to-five times higher than in the general population, according to the Prison Policy Initiative. In May 2021, the think tank estimated that just 55 percent of people in prison had been vaccinated.

The HRI and PRI report concludes with 13 policy recommendations, in which they call for people in prison to explicitly be a part of countries’ vaccination rollouts, for authorities to publicly release COVID-19 vaccination statistics among the incarcerated, and for policymakers to take immediate measures in order to reduce prison overcrowding.

“In short, both public health and human rights considerations and standards recognize that vaccinations are a crucial element to curb further COVID-19 infections among prison populations, who should thus be prioritized in roll-out plans,” the authors write. “Although vaccination is not a fix-all solution, it is one among a range of necessary measures to protect the health and human rights of people deprived of liberty.”

Photograph by Jenn Vargas via Flickr/Creative Commons 2.0

The post Global COVID Vaccination Rates for People in Prison Remain Far Too Low appeared first on Filter.

Elisa Rosso has lung cancer, and has been undergoing chemotherapy. When a DOC staffer called on September 7 to make an appointment to inspect her home, she informed them of her chemo and requested that, as she was severely immunocompromised, they wear PPE. The staffer said that wouldn’t be necessary. 

Rosso’s mother was taken aback. “I don’t understand why you people have to be idiotic during a pandemic,” she told the staffer.

The call ended. The DOC never visited her house. The release address was denied. (Filter made numerous attempts to interview Rosso’s mother by phone, but was unable to do so as she continues with her treatment.)

Rosso had been living with his wife, but he couldn’t be released to their home address because she had been present when he was arrested. He couldn’t think of any other address where he could go. And that meant he would remain in prison.

DOC stipulations for a suitable home include no other residents with felony convictions; no drugs including alcohol; and that the person being released have their own room.

With the implementation of Washington’s Sentencing Reform Act (SRA) in the 1980s, mandatory minimum sentences were imposed on people with felony convictions, and the parole program abolished.

Before the SRA, prisoners went before a board to be assessed for reform and risk of re-arrest. Today, sentences are much longer. But with good behavior, people can get their sentence cut by anywhere from 5 to 50 percent depending on the charge.

But many, like Rosso, are sentenced to “community custody” upon release. This means that if they can’t find a DOC-approved address, they can be held long past their release date.

DOC stipulations include that a suitable home must have no other residents with felony convictions, no drugs including alcohol, and that the person being released must have their own room. These are high barriers, and many are unable to meet them.

He worked his sentence down with good behavior. He was moved to minimum security.

Rosso grew up in Oakland, California. His father is currently serving a life sentence in Texas. His older brother joined a gang at age 14. By the time he was 11, Rosso had too.

“My mom was really good,” Rosso said from atop an empty steel bunk in our dormitory in Monroe Correctional Complex. “But all my family was involved in gang activity, so it was just the logical step for me to join.”

When Rosso was 14, they moved to Bellingham, Washington, where he and his brother were instantly embraced by a local chapter of their gang. Within two months, his brother was already incarcerated, and soon after, so was he, on charges that were ultimately pled down to third-degree theft.

“I got out, and found out my first daughter was on the way,” he said. “I started selling drugs and tried to stay off the radar.”

He met his current partner when he was 15, and the young couple grew up fast and quickly moved in together. Rosso spent most of his teen years selling drugs to support them. When he was 18, they had a son. Money grew tighter.

“Everything started falling apart,” Rosso recounted. “Drug money was short because people were going to jail, and pipelines got closed. The only other thing I knew was doing robberies.”

He hit a local coffee shop, for which he ended up sitting in county jail for more than a year. He got 67 months for charges including first-degree robbery and possession of an unlawful short-barrel shotgun. “I guess [they] frown on having a shotgun under 26 inches.”

About halfway through serving his time, someone suggested he pursue his GED. “I was already gonna be away from my family for five years, and didn’t wanna keep disappearing on my kids,” Rosso said. “I decided I needed to take his advice.”

He got his GED, enrolled in a DOC-offered Construction Trade Apprenticeship Program and began earning an Associates of Technical Arts degree in small business management through Edmonds Community College. He worked his sentence down with good behavior. He was moved to minimum security.

Without a DOC-approved address, Rosso would be in MCC until January 2023—his release date without good behavior.

After his mother’s address was rejected, Rosso appealed the decision. For about a month, he heard nothing. In early October he was informed his appeal had been successful. But some DOC staffers told him that didn’t matter; the address would still not be approved. He submitted his wife’s parents’ address, and again waited without hearing anything.

The DOC replied to the first of Filter’s several requests for comment on the circumstances of Rosso’s release, but ultimately did not provide answers.

In late October, the DOC suddenly reopened Rosso’s case, prompted by what Rosso believes to be Filter’s requests for comment on this story. On November 4, he was approved for release into the custody of his wife’s parents. His is now set to be released on January 7, 2022.

Without an approved address, Rosso would be in MCC until January 2023—his release date without good behavior. He would remain in the environment that pressures him to embrace his old life, rather than the new one being held out of reach. His children would suffer because his mother spoke frankly.

Photograph via Flickr/Creative Commons 2.0

The post “Good Behavior” Gets Us Early Release—If Corrections Decides to Honor It appeared first on Filter.

“The MDS was developed to fill an emergency need during the pandemic for people who were unable to get to their [clinic] due to having contracted COVID-19,” Evan Frost, the Assistant Director of Communications & Public Information for OASAS, told Filter. “[People] who are quarantined for direct exposure to the virus, or vulnerable to risk of infection, and also are unable to identify an alternative person approved to pick up and deliver medication.” 

The program started making deliveries in April 2020. One year in, it “turns out we serviced a lot of people who were on daily doses,” said DOHMH Senior Director of Research and Surveillance Denise Paone. “That becomes very draining on the system. It’s not sustainable … we made the case that it’s a good policy to give 14 or 28 days, but we never said we won’t deliver if [they don’t].” 

There are an estimated 28,500 registered methadone patients in New York City, more than half of whom are over the age of 45. The program has made about 4300 deliveries, to about 958 individuals, as of March 7 (the most recent data available as of publication time). “We thought there would be more people given the relaxation of the federal regs,” Paone said.

The medication is delivered by a courier in large metal lockboxes provided by DOHMH. Brooklyn has received 34 percent of the city’s deliveries; The Bronx, 20 percent; Queens, 24 percent; Manhattan, 18 percent (Staten Island isn’t part of the MDS).

“A lot of the deliveries kept people safe from overdose by maintaining their access to medication, kept people safe from COVID and allowed sick people to stay home,” said Allegra Schorr, president of the Coalition of Medication Assisted Treatment Providers and Advocates (COMPA) and the owner of a methadone clinic in Manhattan.

Schorr acknowledged that there was never any plan or possibility of delivering to all 28,000 patients. “Hopefully, as more patients receive vaccines, the need for MDS will diminish.”

But why haven’t more patients been referred to the MDS? There are two reasons: money and power. 

Medicaid reimbursement for methadone clinics varies by state. In New York, it’s a fee for each service performed—like when a patient comes to the clinic and takes their medication under supervision. There was no reimbursement for doses taken at home because they are unsupervised.

Clinic staff also wield enormous power over patients by controlling access to the medication that they need to go about their daily lives. Patients are threatened with loss of access to their medication if they violate clinic rules. Staff can arbitrarily deny take-home doses needed for a patient to travel (or to stay home). This dehumanizing power dynamic is baked into the structure of every opioid treatment provider (OTP).

Rethinking a Punitive System

COVID forced a reckoning with how methadone clinics operate. It exposed all the ways that clinics are obsolete, and how overdue the US is for a new paradigm for providing methadone—one grounded in dignity, respect and autonomy.

In March 2020, as COVID began to spread across the country, state officials directed the public to shelter in place. That was already a nonstarter for people in methadone programs. The daily travel requirement of the clinic system is a hardship that is rarely acknowledged outside of harm reduction circles. Many participants have to get to their clinic—sometimes an hour or two away—five or six mornings a week. If you’re late, you can’t get your medication. If you can’t get your medication, you can’t function.

“My clinic has been an absolute mess since COVID.”

The pandemic severely disrupted the lives of methadone patients because of inflexible clinic regulations. There are the mandatory counseling groups; the urine collection; the in-person bottle counts. Clinics are often crowded, and patients wait outside in long lines for the clinic to open, and then long lines inside to get medicated. 

“My clinic has been an absolute mess since COVID happened,” Samantha, a methadone patient in Connecticut who is currently pregnant, told Filter. “It was ridiculous to line us up outside in the freezing cold weather while they let in two people at a time. It was pointless.” 

A social worker and small-business owner, Samantha has to be at her clinic by 4 am each morning to get to work on time. “By 5:30 am the line is already down the street and it takes hours to get your medication,” she said. “The clinic could have handled COVID better. Have longer hours—better yet, open at night, make appointments, hire more nurses and of course give [more] bottles.” 

People with substance use disorders—particularly those with opioid use disorder (OUD)—are more susceptible to COVID. In the early days of the pandemic, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) rolled out temporary guidelines revising the take-home dose policy. 

Patients who were deemed “stable”—a subjective determination left to each OTP, which left behind many unhoused and mentally ill patients—could receive either a 14- or 28-day take-home supply. The bar is set high to qualify for additional take-home doses: no recent drug use, regular clinic attendance and a stable home environment and social relationships. 

Racial disparities are stark. Black and Brown communities are disproportionately impacted by COVID; Black people with OUD are four times more likely to develop COVID than white people. In New York City, over 70 percent of methadone patients are Black or Brown.     

In North Carolina, a study conducted in three clinics with the involvement of the North Carolina Survivors Union (NCSU) showed how much take-home dosing experiences varied by clinic. It also found that less than 7 percent of participants reported selling or giving away their take-home doses—belying the obsession that the DEA has with diversion. 

Clinics “should reduce barriers to treatment during COVID-19 and consider expanding access to take-home doses while providing harm reduction messaging to their patients,” the authors concluded. “[W]e should make treatment more accessible, not more restrictive.” 

Looking Beyond the Pandemic

The NCSU, alongside more than a dozen other organizations, made a series of radical recommendations to increase access and to save lives: expand office-based treatment; deploy methadone vans; expand methadone telemedicine services; suspend all toxicology testing; end administrative detox “feetoxs”(a term for what happens when patients don’t pay clinic fees) and suspend the X waiver for prescribing buprenorphine.  

At Montefiore methadone clinics in The Bronx, which predominantly serve the Latinx and Black communities, providers worked quickly in the early days of the pandemic to decrease in-person dosing. Between March 9 and 22, 2020, the proportion of patients with five to six clinic visits per week dropped from 47.2 percent to 9.4 percent. No overdose deaths were reported. 

All urine testing on established patients was halted. Prior to the pandemic, Montefiore staff directly supervised the collection of toxicology samples, meaning they watch participants urinate. The process is humiliating, and a positive screen can result in the loss of take-home privileges. Toxicology testing “should not receive disproportionate weight as a criterion for unsupervised dosing,” the researchers wrote in a paper on their work.

“We have resumed testing on a limited basis when it helps to inform clinical decision making,” said Dr. Shadi Nahvi, a co-author of the Montefiore paper. “I hope that the lessons we learned during pandemic care delivery will shift nationally, away from testing by routine to using testing when it is clinically informed and patient-centered.” 

Urine testing is not voluntary, and positive results can and do result in punishment. As long as these two things are true, urine screening cannot be truly “patient-centered.”

Why did it take a pandemic to enact these changes, and to recommend that methadone clinics center the needs of their patients? 

It’s enraging that it took a pandemic for OTPs to loosen restrictions on take-home doses. Advocates want this policy to be made permanent when the coronavirus is eradicated, as do many involved with the MDS program. 

“New Yorkers who take methadone and get sick from COVID-19 should not have to choose between getting their medication and protecting their health or the health of others,” said former NYC Health Commissioner Dr. Oxiris Barbot in a May 2020 press release. “No other medication is as strictly regulated as methadone, and I urge my federal colleagues to consider making these changes permanent after the pandemic is over.” 

“We need a fundamental shift in the framework of how methadone is made accessible to people in this country.”

But it appears the more flexible take-home bottle policy might not be permanent. “I usually get 13 take-homes, the max in our clinic,” Samantha said. “In the beginning of the pandemic I was allotted 27 bottles. In November of last year, they lowered it back to 13 and didn’t tell me why.” 

“COVID-19 made one thing abundantly clear,” said Biz Berthy, drug policy organizer at VOCAL-NY. “We need a fundamental shift in the framework of how methadone is made accessible to people in this country.” One way to do that is by defunding methadone clinics and, instead, funding a pharmacy-based pick-up system—like those that already exist in Australia, Britain and Canada. 

Activists across the country are organizing to empower people who use methadone to fight for their rights. The Urban Survivors Union (USU) has just released a call to action, The Methadone Manifesto.

“The relaxed COVID-19 SAMHSA guidelines allowing for expanded take home dosing eligibility established in the spring of 2020 are the most policy change the methadone clinic system has seen in decades,” the Manifesto concludes. “A huge opportunity for patient organizing for greater reform has arrived, and we as a community of patients and people who use drugs must seize it.”

Top photograph via New York State Office of Addiction Services and Supports. Middle photograph courtesy of New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Bottom photo by Helen Redmond.

The post One Year Into COVID, Methadone Deliveries Show the Way Forward appeared first on Filter.