Coronavirus And Bamboo Cages
Parnell Prison, Jackson County Michigan, where inmate Robert Caldwell is currently housed
Update as of April 12: Michigan Dept. Of Corrections (MDOC) now confirms there are 364 positive cases of the virus. There are 31 prisons in the entire state, with the Parnall Correctional Facility (where Robert is currently housed) confirming a total of 144 COVID-19 cases. That’s nearly half of the total cases in the state - in one prison!
Living With A Pandemic Behind Bars
At first it was just a rumor. A rumor that, deep down, most of us knew was true. The Corona virus had breached the prison walls. Then there were two green duffle bags in the officers station.
Proof.
Then there were five.
They might as well be body bags.
Inmates suspected of having Covid 19 are called over the unit's unintelligible PA system and told to report to the officer's desk. They make the trek like dead men walking. Sent to medical to be evaluated. If they meet the symptom requirements, and the county health official deems it necessary, they are tested. Thrown in a quarantine cell, that until a few days ago was the hole, pending their results. They either come back to the unit with a negative test, or a Corrections Officer (CO) marches to their cell with a crumpled green duffle bag tucked under an arm to fill it with everything they own. As of yesterday, not a single inmate has returned from the trip to healthcare.
That's just recent protocol. We were infected long before the facility had the tests to prove it. For weeks, before terms like PPE masks and social distancing were the norm, inmates coughed up and down the galleries, spreading aerosolized Covid-19 onto JPay keyboards, telephone receivers, and microwaves. And nothing was done. While the news cycles warned of community spread, inmates hacked into their hands and dealt poker or shuffled dominoes. As the outside world panicked, we licked our fingers clean at the chow hall and sipped coffee from the same cup.
Ignorance is bliss. Or at least it's indifferent. As long we could deny the cause of our headaches, coughs and fevers, as allergies or bronchitis (both actual excuses I heard) we wouldn't have a thing to worry about.
Then came the institutional emails. Updates of the Covid-19 outbreak. At first they were just testing the system. Non committal and general information about keeping us informed. Then it was updates about the preventative measures being taken; the extra soap and cleaning details; none of which actually materialized at our facility. The updates progressed with the spread of the virus. Those of us paying attention could guess the trajectory. They reassured us that there were zero confirmed cases linked to the MDOC. Only after the local news revealed that an MDOC employee had tested positive, did they amend the update to say there were no confirmed cases of MDOC inmates infected. An updated update.
Then the dam broke.
Two inmates from my unit tested positive. It was now undeniable. Update: Covid-19 is in the prison system. It went on to say seven inmates had tested positive statewide. It listed the facilities and their confirmed cases. Our facility had four of the seven cases. Of course it did. The numbers continued to grow. The willfully ignorant were surprised. The rest of us, though few in number, were not.
It was already too late
It's amazing how a few digital pixels, arranged in the right order, can turn a world upside down. As the days progress, so do the amount of positive tests.
"Emergency count. Close your doors."
In prison, every day is a pandemic
Wednesday, March 25 - 2 confirmed cases in MDOC
6:15 am: A garbled announcement by a CO with a microphone halfway down his throat, says that all call outs & daily itineraries are cancelled.
I hear the announcement but stay in bed to try and wrestle a few more minutes of oblivion from the day. I toss and turn, as is my morning ritual, until, at some point I'll be forced to admit that I'm awake. But not yet.
6:15 am: Breakfast is called.
6:30am: Base should be opened just after chow. Base is the common area where we have access to such daily necessities as showers, phones, microwaves, Email kiosks, hot water.
7:30 am: Outside yard is scheduled to be opened by now. Access to weight pit, exercise, a chance to stretch your legs, sunlight, and fresh air.
8:30 am: I finally open my eyes. The unit is unusually quiet. No one slapping dominoes or arguing over cards. I lean from my door and peer down to the base below. Deserted. My fellow inmates are also standing in their doorways, waiting for base to open.
I finish my daily ritual: brush, wash, shit. While I'm getting ready to meditate, my compatriots grow restless. It starts with individual outbursts. Frustrated voices outraged at the change in our schedule, at the restriction of what little freedom we have.
Shouts of, "WE NEED TO CALL OUR FAMILIES!", "OPEN BASE!" and "FUCK YOU BITCH!" encourage other inmates to slam doors and bang on lockers in support. A decent ruckus ensues. Still, even with our doors open, no one actually leaves their cell.
8:45 am (base access 2 hrs+ late): Before the outburst serves its purpose, the emergency siren blows. I still don't know if it was a coincidence or if it was a calculated move to deal with the unfolding situation. In any case the COs come over the intercom and announce, "Emergency count. Close your doors."
We don't ever have to lock our doors during count. Probably not a coincidence. Most inmates immediately follow orders. I hold out as long as I can. An incarcerated game of chicken. Just as a CO makes his way to my cell, I close my door.
Inmates complain about the fuckery taking place during such trying times as the CO pass their cells. The COs never even acknowledge them. By now any hope for morning access to base is all but abandoned.
We know we'll have to wait until after lunch to take care of our responsibilities, to check of our loved ones.
What we don't know is that chow will take forever because, rather than the usual four inmates per table, there will only be two. Wartime policy. Which would make sense if there weren't sixty of us standing on top of each other in line; and if the tables, even with just two of us, didn't still put us close enough to smell each other's breath…well, for those of us who still have their sense of smell.
An attempt at social distancing.
All it really does is extend chow so long that by the time we're finished eating there will be hardly any time for base to be opened.
2 pm: We return from lunch and are ordered back to our cells. Still no base access. We go. But the tension grows. As time unfolds into inaction, cell doors again rattle and lockers become drums.
2:40 pm: By now, even if they open base we'd have no more than an hour to do the entire day's bidding.
2:50 pm: (base access 8 hrs+ late) : Another distorted announcement.
After we decipher the mumblings we learn that base, but not yard, has been opened...for 25 short minutes. Nearly 400 inmates rush down the galleries and pour down the stairs. Lines for the phones and the JPay kiosks stretch for fifty yards.
3:15 pm: There are only nine phones on base. I count more than forty people in line. Each call is limited to fifteen minutes. I'm doubtful I'll get my chance. I only need a few minutes. Just enough to check on mom and to tell her I'm alright. After your fifteen minute call you have to wait another five minutes before the system will let you dial your PIN# again. At which point protocol, and general human decency, suggests you get back in line and wait. It's to ensure one person doesn't tie up a phone for hours while other inmates wait.
But Global TelLink underestimates the size and quality of the pieces of shit, not only running the MDOC, but also incarcerated here. Instead of seeing that we're all in this together and leaving time for their brethren, the worst of us hang up after the fifteen-minutes and, holding down the receiver, pretend to talk for the five minutes until they can dial again.
The higher ground is so often abandoned because so few are willing to make the sacrifices to take it.
Assholes.
3:30 pm: Chaos circles the base around me. My eyes dart from the clock to the phones in hopes I'll have time to make a call. Luckily I make it. I will be quick, as not to be a hypocrite. I check in with mom, assure her I'm fine, update her on the upcoming fiasco that will likely unfold in the immediate future. I also take the opportunity, while I have it, to tell her that if I don't call everyday she needs to contact the prison and threaten to call the news if they don't give us access to the phones and showers. She's all too happy to agree. My righteous indignation comes from the maternal strand of my DNA. I assume. Don't know pops. I hang up and wave over the next inmate. Easily under five minutes.
3:40 pm: Before I have time to do anything else, base is closing. Luckily for me I passed my tablet off to my nine-fingered Mexican friend, Toro, who was already in the Jpay line, so he could plug up for me. This subverting the system, though only taking a few extra seconds, probably cancels out any karmic credit I got from my speedy phone call. But simply breaking even places me ahead of most of the people here. I'll take it.
3:45 pm: We are rushed back to our cells for count.
7:30 pm: Base and yard is finally opened. Two hours late.
7:50 pm: Yard is closed 45 mins early so an ambulance can enter the compound. We are later told that someone in the unit next to us died. Who knows though.
8:45 pm: Base is closed. Another day down. The fear of our changing schedule, or disrupting our routine, is greater than that of the virus. For those of us relatively young and healthy, prison itself is worse than CoVid-19. Still, sleep does not come easy.
Thursday, March 26 - 7 more confirmed MDOC cases
6:15 am: Call outs are cancelled. I don't wake up. I have to be told later about the announcement.
6:30 am: Base should be opened.
9 am: Finally wake up.
Lazy POS. Brush, shit, wash face, meditate. Good session. 38 minutes. Focused on emptiness.
9:45 am: Why the FUCK hasn't base opened?
11:00 am: Count time. Base still not open. You can feel the frustration build. Good thing I meditated.
12:25 pm: Chow. Fish patty. More cardboard than fish.
12:40 pm: Walk back into the unit, fingers crossed that base will be opened. We push through the unit doors and are greeted by a group of about twenty inmates standing around the bottom of the stairs. Not quite on base, but definitely not going directly back up to their cells.
It takes a moment to read the room. No one wants to be the first to actually walk onto base. An inmate and his friend, push past the crowd towards one of the tables on base. They take a seat. The crowd slowly grows as inmates return from chow. Still many return to their cells. At the sight of the two ruggedly handsome rebels, a few inmates stream onto base. In total only eight take seats. A few others walk laps around base.
No one uses the phones or microwaves.
The COs are losing.
The crowd is pushed up against the officer's station. The COs exit their sanctuary. They announce base is not open. Most of the inmates return to their cells.
12:55 pm: The captain makes an appearance. She wants to know what all the ruckus is about. She then wants to know why base was closed in the first place. Asses are chewed out. We can see from the galleries. Dirt bags.
1 pm: Like a kid being forced to apologize, the announcement is made: Base is now open.
A rare victory behind bars.
Turns out, the first-shift COs decided it'd be personally safer for them not to open base at all, so they wouldn't have to be around us filthy inmates. The fact that they weren't following orders explains why they didn't immediately start using their tasers and pepper spray to get us to leave base. Calling for back up would just make things harder for them. Base was opened but yard was not. It's OK. you take what you can get. At least I got to check in with mom to tell her the news needn't be alerted. At least not today.
3:30 pm: Base closes. We return to our cells without incident.
5:10 pm: Chow
5:20 pm: Base is opened. Outside yard is not.
8:45 pm: Unit closes for the night.
10 pm: As is my nightly ritual, I instigate a false verbal fight between my neighbors before drifting off to sleep. We use animal sounds…innocently mischievous entertainment. Before I fall asleep I wonder about the roots of my less-than-panicked approach to this virus. Initially, I decide, it has to do with the fact that I'm 90% sure I already had it and have been over it for about a week now. Immunity will do wonders to kill virus-related fears. But I also realize some of my careless attitude has to do with the fact that I'm a realist (prison can force this on you) and I understand, and have accepted, that there is simply NO way to prevent the spread in here. And having been desensitized, for years, to simply accepting my fate, I decide, there is simply no other way to be.
Sleep comes slightly easier than the night before.
Friday, March 27 - 14 additional MDOC cases
6:15 am: Announcement. Unintelligible. I stay in bed.
6:30 am: Base should be opened.
9:30 am (base access 3 hrs late): Another announcement. I get up and yell across the gallery to Toro. I need him to decipher the announcement.
"They called chow," he says.
I check the time. It can't be lunch already. "Chow?" I yell back.
"Yeah. They just called breakfast," he says.
Three hours late? Fuck it. Since I'm up, I decide to go breakfast. Peanut butter, runny yellow grits, and bitter OJ. Standard.
9:45-10 am: I get back from chow. Base is deserted. While slurping up grits I learned that base was never called. This morning no one is willing to cross the line onto base. I'm so disgusted with my fellow inmates unwillingness to standup for themselves, I walk back up to my cell. There would be no time for yard or base anyway. Count is just a few minutes away.
1 pm: (base access 6+ hrs late):
Count has been done for hours. We still haven't gone to chow. Base still isn't opened. The facility found a loophole. If they stretch out chow until just before count, there won't be time for any yard or base access. Either that or they're simply too stupid to see that after count clears they should open base to avoid the previous day's incident. Both are equally possible. Tensions rise.
1:15 pm: Inmates begin gathering on the galleries outside of other cells. Yelling. Banging lockers. Slamming cell doors. The COs are losing control again, and they know it. Normally we'd be told to get off the galleries, return to our cells, or be written tickets for loitering.
Not today. Not that any of us would care.
Inmates start testing the waters, walking to other cells to talk, non verbally daring each other to walk farther down the gallery. Two inmates head towards the stairs. They return before descending. One inmate walks down to the second gallery to plug his tablet up to the kiosk. He returns, his mission accomplished.
A few of us gather at the end of the gallery, by the stairs. The COs have no idea what to do. A makeshift game of handball breaks out. Envelope pushed. I feel alive. Almost free.
For many of us, the virus isn't even on our radar.
1:30 pm: Toro passes by the game of handball. He's headed to counselor's office. He stops to tell me his plan. I tell him to tell the counselor that if they're going to run chow so late that we can't get yard, to start opening base before yard. This was probably his plan all along. He gets the credit.
1:40 pm: I don't know what Toro said but a few minutes later base is opened. Another victory; if getting less base time can be counted as a victory. Either way, I'll take it.
2 pm: I call mom and give her the terrible news: that she has to restrain herself from calling the news for yet another day. I love that woman.
2:45 pm: Chow is finally called.
3:30 pm: Count.
4:30 pm: Base is opened. Before chow. Early.
6:20 pm: Chow is finally called. Late as hell.
7:15 pm: Limited outside yard is opened for the first time in two days. I meet Toro down stairs and we spin laps until the yard is closed.
11 pm: I write for awhile, and me and the neighbors enjoy our first relatively normal night, since the first conformed cases. No one starts a vocal animal fight for entertainment purposes. Unity. It feels like something loose to normal.
I hope mom and my preggo Sis are going to be OK. I've gotten used to feeling helpless.
Saturday March 28 - 18 more confirmed cases in MDOC
Our daily routine returns to a relative normal. No callouts, no weight pit, and no gym because it was turned into a field hospital for the sickest inmates. The rumor is it's filling up. The tension lessens. Despair is our normal.
7 pm: Our adjacent unit, 10 block, as well as being the hole is now also serving as quarantine for those inmates who've tested positive and those still awaiting their results. To make more room for our ever-increasing infected population, about ten inmates from the hole are transferred and set up in isolation in our unit.
Sunday March 29 - 24 more confirmed cases
10 pm: Two surgical style masks, made from the same repurposed material as our prison blues, are passed out to each inmate. Much too little, far too late.
Monday March 30 - unknown confirmed cases
2 pm: An announcement is made that every inmate has to wear their mask at all times. No one moves.
2:20 pm: The announcement is repeated. Half the inmates are now donning masks. I am not. There is no need. At some point they stopped using buckets to bail water from the Titanic.
10:45 pm: I instigate one of the funnier fake verbal fights between my neighbors in awhile. It is centered around body shaming. I go to sleep to a symphony of coughs and hacks from every direction.
Tuesday March 31 - 7 more MDOC cases
If I had to guess, through informal surveys of my fellow inmates, upwards of 40% of us have already had it and gotten over it, maybe 25% currently have symptoms, 15% have been diagnosed and quarantined, and the rest are the ones that are either lying, lucky, or procrastinators.
Yard and base schedule is back to normal.
Yard has to be shut down at least twice for an ambulance to retrieve severely ill inmates.
10:15am: Older inmate collapses on base. Base is closed. He is taken out on a gurney.
The unit resumes regular movement.
In the ensuing days, there has been no official declaration, no explanation, no reassurance, no reason or conversation about the future. Those first cases marked the beginning of a fear-induced paralysis of the system that will, hopefully, start to fade away. But, I suspect things will get worse before they get better. A shift I've been waiting for since 2013.
The powers that be, have done their best to keep us updated on the overall situation, as far as infection rates go. But where they've failed is in delegating protocol and procedure to the individual prisons. Every day has been an inconsistent, learning-on-the-fly, nonsensical attempt to kick water uphill with no real sense of purpose, communication, or even the slightest use of leadership to dictate the decisions being made. And the fact there are things that could have been, and should have been, prepared for, is more than frustrating.
Instead of ordering masks and converting any of the dozens of unused prison buildings on this compound for bed space or isolation units, they waited and hoped for the best. Instead of using the weeks before hand, when we all knew this was coming, to establish quarantine protocol and alternative yard schedules, they did nothing, and hoped for the best. Instead of figuring out how social distancing is supposed to work in prison they issued vague prevention suggestions, and hoped for the best. Instead of preparing they waited, and now that shit is going sideways they've forfeited the right to act surprised.
But the sad truth is that, even if all of these preventative measures were taken they would've, almost certainly, still failed to contain the virus. All the ordered social distancing in the world wouldn't push our cells farther apart; it wouldn't stop the virus from floating up or down five stories and in between the bars of our cells; it wouldn't give us our own phones, microwaves, or showers to use; and it wouldn't instantly change the deeply engrained neglectful and abusive policies in prison. The fact remains that you need a base level of freedom, ability, and humanity to practice preventative measure like social distancing, none of which are available behind bars.
This is what doomed us from the start.
And I will admit that the prison administration is in a tough spot. I mean, they have to do SOMETHING. But no matter what - they are destined for failure, because they are missing the point entirely. You can't neglect someone's well being for years and years and then step in and flip their world upside down to prevent something infinitely less painful than their everyday misery and expect them to fall in line.
Imagine how ridiculous it would be if a group of POWs, stuffed into a bamboo cage in Vietnam, after being starved, beaten, and tormented for years, were suddenly thrown a hand full of surgical masks by their captors and told, "Wear these, there's a severe case of the flu going around this season." Hyperbolic? Yes, but the analogy holds up. Do you think those POWs would scramble for the masks? Absolutely not. They're more concerned with where their next meal is coming from, or when the electrodes are going to be strapped to their balls later that afternoon. Their hierarchy of misery has no room for a such a virus. Bigger, more miserable, fish to fry. And even if they were forced to use the masks, it begs the question: who is it for? Them, or the captors? And if it was a genuine attempt to keep the POWs alive so they could extract intel from them later, their preventative measures simply could NOT work with a population huddled together inside of a bamboo cage.
In this case, the biggest problem isn't the captors, or the virus, or the POWs. The biggest problems are the inhuman conditions and the bamboo cages themselves. They are not conducive to health and well being, so any attempt to establish health or well being inside of a prisoner of war camp is doomed from the start. And it is the inability of the administration to see this paradox that is the most frustrating aspect of all.
This is what it is like being behind bars during a pandemic. Yes, it is very serious. And if I comes off as flippant in the face of something you deem terrifying, it's only because of the tier it occupies on my hierarchy of misery; a top down list of fears or discomfort that I have the ability to pay attention to. Covid-19 doesn't even crack my top ten. For many of you in the free world, you have the luxury, as well as the terrifying experience, to have had this pandemic suddenly jump up the list of your hierarchy. Just like the luxury of being relatively young and healthy allows me to keep the virus down on my list.
So what's the answer?
For you out there? Stay safe, take the precautions you can, but don't let your fear grow stronger than this virus.
For us in here?
To he honest, I really don't think you want to hear the answer. It is not simple or cheap, and it will not be quick.
The truth is, you can't pick and choose when you care about the wellbeing of others. You either do or your don't. Likewise, you can't just step into a bamboo cage and expect to pass out cough drops to keep the inmates healthy. If you want to find a real solution, you first have to start questioning the use of bamboo cages all together.
And while you figure all that out. We will be here, waiting....