David Zalubowski/AP Photo
Prisoners outside a federal institution in Englewood, Colorado, February 18, 2020. Advocates across the country are struggling to get inmates released during the coronavirus pandemic.
CLEVELAND – Elkton Federal Prison in Ohio cut off visits the second week of March. It then upped the number of minutes inmates could speak to family members from 300 to 500. For his 500th minute, an inmate called his wife to tell her that he was running a fever of over 100. He was being moved to a different section of the facility, where a doctor would see him. That was March 29.
On Thursday night, his wife spoke with the Prospect to describe conditions inside Elkton, where local media reports that the prison is “overrun” with the virus. She asked for anonymity out of fear that speaking to the press might hurt her husband’s case. She added that he is a nonviolent offender.
In the third week of March, she said that inmates started to hear stories that somebody was taken to the hospital. By March 26, Elkton locked all the doors, refusing to allow inmates to go outside and minimizing the time they were together. They even stopped allowing inmates to go to the commissary to buy things like deodorant, soap, shampoo, conditioner, or sinus medication. The facility began to take inmates’ temperatures with a forehead thermometer, but staff was using the same sanitary wipe to wipe the thermometer after each inmate’s temperature was taken.
“He said he was trying to stay away from everybody, but he said there were so many people coughing everywhere there was no way to escape it,” said the wife. Soon, the facility began to move people exhibiting symptoms into the same section of the facility. But common surfaces are rarely wiped down. Her husband told her that he uses a sock to cover the phone when he calls her.
Yesterday, Cleveland.com’s Eric Heisig reported that one inmate, 53-year-old Woodrow Taylor, died April 2 at Elkton Prison “after experiencing symptoms associated with the coronavirus.” On April 3, the inmate posthumously tested positive for COVID-19. Of the five deaths in Columbiana County, where the prison is located, two were Elkton inmates, Taylor and 65-year-old Margarito Garcia-Fragoso. There are now 28 positive cases in the county.
During our conversation, the Elkton inmate’s wife said that her husband had just emailed her: “Shit just got real,” he wrote her as he learned of Taylor’s death hours after media reported it. “I’m not really feeling too good mentally.”
As of Thursday, three inmates had tested positive for COVID-19 inside Elkton, according to 3News investigator Rachel Polansky. At least 80 may be exhibiting symptoms of the virus. This corresponds with what the Prospect learned from the inmate’s wife.
Despite Ohio’s early efforts to contain the spread of the virus across the state, few if any of the same efforts were made for detained and incarcerated populations. Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, said last weekend that inmates may be safer in correctional facilities than at home. On April 3, the Cuyahoga County jail reported that six inmates “are presumed positive” for the novel coronavirus. Similarly, in an Ohio state prison in Marion, three staff members tested positive, according to Cleveland Scene’s Sam Allard.
Advocates across the state are calling for a decrease in the number of people held in detention by state and federal corrections officers and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The ACLU of Ohio announced April 3 that DeWine may be reversing course—at least slightly. The governor is sending letters to judges, asking for 38 prisoners to be released early. In a letter April 1, the organization called on the governor to do more, noting that “Ohio’s prison system currently operates at about 10,000 people above capacity … Given this, a 10,000 person reduction feels like a potential floor, but not ceiling, for overall system numbers in this crisis situation.” In particular, the organization asked the governor to prioritize people with health vulnerabilities, those over age 60, those charged with drug possession and nonviolent felons, and those with less than six months left of their sentence or technical violations of post-release conditions.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“I completely understand none of us have been in this situation,” the inmate’s wife told the Prospect. “I understand that they’re not prepared [to have] 70 sections where people can be isolated but at the same time it just seems so inhumane and where [inmates] can’t do anything to protect themselves.” She said that her husband was now with the sick population and that there were two inmates on life support and another 15 in critical care at the local hospital. But her husband thinks the quarantine came too late.
Of the five deaths in Columbiana County, where the prison is located, two were Elkton inmates. There are now 28 positive cases in the county.
“He said, ‘Babe, the people in the sick area are coughing just as bad as where I just left from,’” his wife explained. The only difference was a fever. She said that her husband feels like he just has a bad cold given his symptoms, but that his continued exposure virtually guarantees that if he hasn’t contracted COVID-19 by now, he will later. “One gentleman got X-rays and [staff] said he had COVID-19 symptoms and the X-rays showed that he has pneumonia, but now this man is in the same area as my husband,” she said, adding that the hospital tested him for the novel coronavirus, but while they await the results they sent the patient back to Elkton.
“It almost feels like they’re punishing us for being sick,” her husband told her. She added that her husband is a good husband and a good dad. “Taking care of the house and the kids,” she continued, adding that he would go to work “and still run circles around me—cooking, cleaning, ironing, and sewing, you name it.” She said that she wanted to speak to the media to give a voice to those inside Elkton.
“It’s so hard, as a wife—well for anybody who has any type of feeling that people would be suffering like that,” she said. “To some people in this world, they’re just inmates, but for me that inmate is my whole world.”
Friday morning, she received another email from her husband: “It’s here standing right next to me, death! How could someone do this and why? Nothing I’ve ever done in life is deserving of this punishment and suffering.”
