Some prison units contain one-person cells and others are large rooms packed with bunk beds. Officials say that the restrictions at each unit will last until it’s been two weeks since the last positive test. “We’re all going to have to make sacrifices to make sure this doesn’t just blow up in the prisons, and those sacrifices need to be made by TDCJ and by inmates.”īy Tuesday morning, the agency had locked down close to two dozen units with confirmed positive cases of COVID-19, closing down mess halls, recreation yards and day rooms in an effort to keep people apart. “It would make sure that inmates would have less exposure to each other and less exposure to staff,” he said. Jeff Ormsby, a prison union president in Texas, has been pushing for the most restrictive lockdown possible across all 104 prisons in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Long lockdowns have led to violence, most recently in Mississippi, where the head of the corrections department said last year that extended lockdowns create “an unsafe environment for my staff.” Lockdowns to slow the virus’ spread in Italy led to fatal riots in several prisons last month.īut some say tight restrictions are the only way to keep prisoners safe. You need people to be honest about their symptoms.” ![]() “If the response to having symptoms is punitive,” she said, “that discourages them from speaking up about it. “The difference is that what it means in prison is so much more onerous.”Īlison Horn, an investigative supervisor with the nonprofit legal organization Civil Rights Corps, said she worried that fear of a solitary quarantine or a unit-wide lockdown could lead prisoners to hide how ill they are. “We’re being told in the free world that social distancing and sheltering in place is the appropriate response-so then it is probably the appropriate response in prison too,” said Craig Haney, a psychology professor from University of California, Santa Cruz who has studied the effects of isolation on incarcerated people. Studies show long-term social isolation comes with a higher chance of dying prematurely, in part because of the physical effects of stress. Solitary confinement can increase anxiety and disordered thinking, worsen mental health problems and heighten the risk of suicide. And they may turn out to be risky for guards as well, by possibly leading to prison violence. No one knows how long hundreds of thousands of prisoners might be confined to their cells or bunks.īut what we do know, more than anyone probably did in 1995, is that lockdowns can levy a heavy toll on the mental and physical wellbeing of prisoners. By this week well over 300,000 prisoners were living in full or partial lockdown.Įxperts say the widespread use of such restrictions is extraordinary, in scale and in length. ![]() A few days later, Massachusetts announced similar measures prisons in California, Oklahoma, Vermont, Illinois and Texas all followed suit. The federal system effectively locked down its 122 institutions, holding more than 144,000 people, in a move announced March 31. Lockdowns over COVID-19 are much bigger-and likely to last much longer. Bureau of Prisons did something it said was unprecedented: It imposed a nationwide lockdown, shutting tens of thousands of incarcerated people in their cells and dorms. When prisoners at four federal penitentiaries began rioting in the fall of 1995, the U.S. ![]() Sign up for our newsletters to receive all of our stories and analysis. The Marshall Project is a nonprofit newsroom covering the U.S. Coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, criminal justice and immigration.
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