Rich Pedroncelli/AP Photo
Inmates walk through the exercise yard of a federal prison near Folsom, California, 2013.
CLEVELAND – Conditions inside Elkton Federal Correctional Institution worsened over the weekend. Family members and loved ones of inmates inside the prison contacted the Prospect to tell their stories.
According to several family members who asked not to be named for fear of retribution, the Elkton facility is severely understaffed, as corrections officers use sick days to avoid exposure, or are struggling to recover from illness themselves. The Federal Bureau of Prisons has already confirmed three deaths of Elkton inmates in the last week. Several conversations with family members also indicated that the local hospital in Columbiana County was quickly becoming overwhelmed with the fast-growing number of inmates in need of intensive care, as the virus spreads inside the facility. On Saturday, Attorney General William Barr announced that he had instructed the BOP to prioritize early release of some prisoners in hot spot facilities, including Elkton; Oakdale, Louisiana; and Connecticut.
On Monday, the Prospect spoke with the friend of an inmate who subsequently connected the Prospect with an Elkton inmate for two different three-way recorded conversations, shared with permission of the inmate. The friend asked the inmate some of the questions discussed with the Prospect beforehand. The friend also asked for anonymity to protect her family.
The inmate alleges that there have been 10 inmates who have tested positive for the novel coronavirus, and five inmate deaths. Previously, the facility only reported three deaths as well as 20 hospitalizations.
Below are excerpts of the two conversations between the friend and the Elkton inmate. The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
INMATE: … They said five people died so far, 10 people have tested positive so far for it, but out of the 10 people that tested positive for it, five people probably people that already died from it. I said three officers got it, and then the medical and the staff ain’t telling us nothing. The staff ain’t even fucking here. They ain’t come out and tell us nothing.
And then the medical ain’t doing nothing. At first they just walk around taking temperatures, but people weren’t having temperatures, so they can’t tell nothing, and people didn’t know nothing was wrong with them because they didn’t have temperatures, and they felt normal, and then they started passing out so they stopped doing temperatures, and now they’re just doing little heart-rate and all that stuff, but it really ain’t benefiting us because they just leaving us all here. That’s gonna fall out—
“There is no way that we can self-quarantine ourselves.”
FRIEND: Did you go to the hospital when they did your x-ray? Where did you go for that?
INMATE: No, I stayed here on the compound. I went in there. What happened was at this time my chest wasn’t hurting, but I couldn’t smell or taste and then my body was sore up under my arms, basically around my ribs and my chest was hurting, but then it stopped but then I just couldn’t smell or taste but that’s one of the symptoms, and I went over and I kept begging them like, ‘Man, y’all telling me to tell you something’s wrong but then we tell you something’s wrong and y’all not doing anything unless you have a temperature or a cough or we really can’t breathe. And they were like, ‘Well, this, that, and the third …” Two days went by where I kept telling them this. One day they were like, ‘If anybody got any problems, let us know, and we’ll take you over and do x-rays.’
Well, now they found out that a lot of people got pneumonia. I guess this virus is making people have pneumonia … and when I got over there and I said I can’t taste, and they said, ‘Well, you ain’t got a fever, this, that, and the third.’ And I was like, well, that don’t mean that I don’t have symptoms. I feel like shit. They were like, ‘Well, are you having chest pains?” Dude was like, ‘tell them yeah,’ but this time I’m not really having no chest pains. Everybody that was coming [to medical], and they weren’t haven’t chest pains. They were sending them back. And then, they don’t even have to test you to test you, basically you gotta be on your death bed … You gotta understand that, that’s understandable, because people in the world don’t even got a test.
You gotta imagine what we going through in here. There is no way that we can self-quarantine ourselves, or stay social distance from people that come in the three-man cube. They’re not rooms. They’re open cubes, so I’m on the top bunk. If somebody next to me on the bottom bunk or the next top bunk to my left or my right or across from me and they cough, I’m going to get it because I can’t social distance myself. And then they gave us this fucking—they gave us two little funky-ass masks that ain’t preventing nothing. Two little generic masks that ain’t doing nothing, but they gave it to them 10 days after this shit happened …
FRIEND: So are they cleaning? Nobody’s coming out to sanitize nothing? Are they cleaning anything?
INMATE: Well, when this shit first happened they came in and sprayed this red shit back on the showers and the bathroom, but then they stopped doing all this shit. They don’t even really come in no more. Basically, if you ain’t falling out, and you ain’t complaining and crying to them, you ain’t going nowhere. We’re just all stuck in here like sardines.
That’s why I just told my mom, ‘Call my lawyer.’ Which you know, you can’t do nothing, but I told her [to] call my lawyer because a couple people did this, and a couple people got out. This shit is so easy … The warden can let us go right now. That’s how much power he’s got. He can say, ‘My prison, this prison is infested,’ or some shit like that, and ‘It’s really bad here, so my prison is really bad right now, and I wanna release everybody.’ [Ohio Governor Mike DeWine is considering the release of some prisoners.]
…
FRIEND: Did you see them carry somebody out that died from it … ?
INMATE: I can’t necessarily say I’ve seen that, but we have seen them take somebody out on a stretcher with a sheet over they face so, I mean, but it was so far out … You can physically see the sheet over his face, but you can’t say if he was dead or not. But come on, common sense. If the person alive you’re gonna have the—we’ve seen people taken out and got the sheet under they neck and you see them moving and standing, but you take somebody out and they have a sheet over they face, come on man, you can put two and two together. And then they said five people died?
FRIEND: Does that include the workers or just the prisoners?
INMATE: I don’t think the—I don’t think the workers died as of what we know. But you gotta think about it: We [are] not being told everything, but all the stuff I told you about the five people died, 10 people positive—them are all the people we know of so far, the only people they told us. It’s like 20 to 30 people are in the hospital right now. We know, in my unit right now, of two people because we talked to they families. There’s two people right now on life support, right now. And every day, we see them taking people out on stretchers. They just came and took somebody next door to us, not in my unit.
FRIEND: So is it true that the National Guard are there? ‘Cause they were saying that the national guard—
INMATE: They’re here. They came today. But, like I say, they only here to help them, because they [are] understaffed, because people retiring and people quit and people not coming in and they’re here just to help, like with the medical stuff trying to get people to take, to get people over there to the medical if they fall down or whatever, so the regular COs can do their job because also a lot of COs who are going out to the hospital. Because think about it, so if you got 20 people in the hospital, it take two COs sitting there with them. We got COs that we haven’t even seen before. A lot of new people working. They working doubles, because there ain’t people working here—
FRIEND: So the National Guard was just called in to cover the other workers? They [are] not really there to cover anything extra?
INMATE: So they [are] not really here to help out like, to really help us out, they here to help them out, to get them extra help so the regular COs can actually do their job instead of doing everything else. Because right now, it’s so crazy. Everybody [is] running around here that’s not even in medical, doing medical stuff, all type of shit, you know what I’m saying? Because there’s not, they’re already under workers, and then on top of that, you know what I’m saying, this shit’s happening so fast everybody playing their part … That’s why a lot of people can’t give us information because they not the warden, they not the government. You know as long as this shit’s been going on nobody’s seen the warden. He’s here, but nobody—he ain’t come into the unit to ask how we doing. He sent other people, but that’s above they pay grade what he know. He only know what they doing and tryna get people out of here. They supposed to get 70 percent of people out of there though. That’s what I’m saying, if I’m going to be in that 30 percent or if I’m going to be in the 70 percent because I ain’t sign no plea for no, to be denied.
FRIEND: So what would like for me to let somebody know? What is it that you want?
INMATE: Help me please, please.
The story has been updated.
