With Guards Crippled by COVID-19, States Are Closing Prisons

https://news.yahoo.com/guards-crippled-covid-19-states-151858915.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/01/us/coronavirus-prisons-jails-closing.html

 

Brendon Derr, Rebecca Griesbach and Danya Issawi
Sat, January 2, 2021, 10:18 AM EST

Battered by a wave of coronavirus infections and deaths, local jails and state prison systems around the United States have resorted to a drastic strategy to keep the virus at bay: Shutting down completely and transferring their inmates elsewhere.

From California to Missouri to Pennsylvania, state and local officials say that so many guards have fallen ill with the virus and are unable to work that abruptly closing some correctional facilities is the only way to maintain community security and prisoner safety.

Experts say the fallout is easy to predict: The jails and prisons that stay open will probably become even more crowded, unsanitary and disease-ridden, and the transfers are likely to help the virus proliferate both inside and outside the walls.

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There have been more than 480,000 confirmed coronavirus infections and at least 2,100 deaths among inmates and guards in prisons, jails and detention centers across the nation, according to a New York Times database.

Among those grim statistics are the nearly 100,000 correctional officers who have tested positive and 170 who have died.

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Ohio and New Hampshire have each called in the National Guard to bolster thinned correctional staff. Michigan has transferred hundreds of inmates around its prison system as staff counts have dipped, despite infection rates in the prison system doubling during the past month, according to the Times’ data.

According to union officials, teachers and nurses who were once a rare stopgap resource are increasingly relied on by the federal prison system to fill staffing holes brought on by both illness and a rash of early retirements among veteran officers.

Analysts say the root of the problem lies in mass incarceration, particularly in rural areas, where most of the closures are occurring.

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Correctional officers also point to low pay, dangerous conditions and a lack of institutional support as drawbacks to attracting qualified candidates — and ultimately bringing staffing numbers to adequate levels.

In some states, correctional officers earn less than $12.50 an hour — not much more than fast-food workers — and many lack broad job protections or benefits.

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The prison closures and subsequent inmate transfers, she said, were like “pouring gasoline on a fire.”

“They’re terrified. They realize that when they go to work, they may not come home at the end of the day,” Watkins said. “The nature of the job is, ‘anything could happen, including getting killed.’ But what they’re not used to is knowing that going to work might mean their family can get a disease that they could die from.”

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