The year 2020 started out on a high note. Well, at least for me it did. I had just graduated from a rather difficult residential, evidence-based, cognitive-behavioral treatment program that was “designed to facilitate favorable institutional adjustment and successful reintegration” into the community. The program, appropriately named Challenge, was by far one of the most rigorous endeavors I’ve ever ventured to accomplish. It was an 18-month long emotional rollercoaster ride that led me to face my demons while confronting a litany of thinking errors. I had to admit to, and learn to accept, the harm I have caused, and embrace a deep longing within my heart to make amends. Challenge taught me that, although I may not be able to “right my wrongs” (because I cannot change the past), I can do something positive with the here and now. The year 2020 has been nothing short of a test that has me digging tools out of my proverbial CBT tool bag on a daily basis.
I transitioned from the residential unit on January 6, and requested to be considered for “redesignation” the following day. I’m currently designated as a high security inmate and am housed at the United States Penitentiary (USP) located in Tucson, Arizona. I requested to be reclassified as a medium security prisoner and asked to be transferred to a less restrictive federal correctional institution. On Wednesday, January 8, I was told my request had been “processed and routed” and that I’d likely have a response in about 4 to 6 weeks.
I am presently serving a 40-year sentence after pleading guilty to committing sexual offenses. Under current federal law I must serve at least 85% of my sentence, as there is no parole in the federal system for anyone convicted after 1986. (The exception to this rule applies to prisoners sentenced under the Uniform Code of Military Justice in military courts.) I am not even eligible for sentence reduction under the First Step Act of 2017. My crimes are specifically excluded from the law. Such is the plight of many inmates who are systematically excluded from legislative relief.
Transfer is a big step in any inmate’s life. It can be a very positive – or negative – experience. On February 27, 2020, exactly 5 years to the day of my initial arrest, my case manager informed me that my request for redesignation had been approved. The joy I felt is a bit difficult to explain. Imagine it like this: you want to move to a better neighborhood in a different city. A place that offers better educational choices and more opportunities for work, as well as better recreational options. However, before you can move, you need to ask the “board of control” for permission. You lay out your accomplishments and all that you’ve done to better yourself, but, at the end of the day, it is inevitably out of your control as to where you will spend the next 20 to 30 years of your life. I’m not trying to imply that prison has duck ponds and nature walks along the beach (contrary to popular belief, there is no such thing as Club Fed), but where you’re incarcerated and who you share the yard with can, and often does, mean the difference between life and death. Such is the choice when requesting redesignation.
My bleak future was actually beginning to look a little brighter. Then the reality that is the novel coronavirus and COVID-19 began to rear its ugly head. In January, as inmates nationwide watched the president sign into law the most meaningful prison reform legislation in recent history, a silent soldier marched around the world, sickening and subsequently killing unsuspecting victims. An invisible assassin paralyzed and took control of the world.
On March 13, the administration here at USP Tucson began what is called “modified operations.” At the time there were five operational units here (A through E) with a capacity for 256 inmates per unit. Each unit consists of two sides, with 128 prisoners each. That is over 1,200 inmates, not counting prisoners housed in the secure housing unit.
The modified operations designation allowed only one unit on the yard for outdoor recreation at a time. And that was for a mere one hour a day. All educational, religious and indoor recreational programming were halted, as psychology and medical services were limited. The changes were a precursor to what modified operations was to become – a psychological nightmare.
Everything changed on April 1, 2020. Our cell doors were not unlocked at 6 AM as they normally would have been. Later that same day, a memorandum was slid under my door. Operations were being modified yet again. Now we’d be locked in our cells for 22 hours a day, seven days a week. Outdoor recreation would be canceled, medical services callouts would be limited to one day per week, and commissary would be restricted to $50 per week.
On Friday, April 3, an officer told me to pack up because I was being transferred to my newly designated facility. Three hours later, that order was rescinded. All national transfers (excluding medical or disciplinary) were being suspended until further notice. In a move taken from Governor Andrew Cuomo’s playbook, elderly inmates with stacked comorbidities were moved to medical units here on the compound. All meals were going to be served in our cells. To make it worse, the already restricted commissary list was routinely out of stock when it came to items like envelopes and writing paper, toothpaste and soap, vitamin C and multivitamins. It was also hit or miss when ordering batteries for our radios. (In the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) the televisions are set up so as to only be audible through a local FM transmitter. No radio, or no batteries, means no access to news or entertainment.) All visitation was canceled. Volunteers, usually religious and educational in nature, were barred from entry.
There was one point of positivity. One of the many unethical high-priced scams run by profiteers in the prison industrial complex is the inmate telephone system. It costs families many millions of dollars collectively to stay in touch with incarcerated loved ones (see www.stopprisonprofiteers.org) and the strain of unemployment caused by the COVID-19 pandemic made it even more difficult for loved ones to speak to their families. Since visitation was halted, the BOP made all phone calls free for the duration of the pandemic.
On May 18, the inmate population here received a new memorandum. The administration was going to allow us to go (10 people at a time) to outdoor recreation for one hour per week. Unfortunately, the schedule meant that any one person may or may not make it outside for that week. If I wanted to go outside and I wasn’t one of the first ten in line, I’d have to try again the following week on my dorm’s designated day.
On June 1, everything came to another screeching halt. We were placed on 24-hour emergency lockdown due to events beyond our control. Riots were erupting on American streets and cities were burning. So, we paid for it in the name of “institutional security.” No telephone, no television, locked in the cell and only allowed out for a five-minute shower once every three days.
On June 9, we returned to the 22-hour a day lockdown and again started receiving hot meals once a day. That lasted exactly 20 days, until the inevitable happened. A staff member tested positive for coronavirus and we (the inmates) returned to a 24-hour a day lockdown. We remained on lockdown until July 20.
On June 30, we watched as all “essential workers” were moved into a single unit, while the rest of us remained locked in our cells. Fear became a tangible element of everyday life. One of the most helpless and hopeless feelings one can have as an inmate occurs when the key locks that cell door. Only a human being with a key can unlock it again. Depression set in for many, including myself, as the reports from around the nation grew more and more grim. Inmates in federal and state prisons all over the country were getting sick and dying while we were locked in our cells. We were offered nothing in the form of information from prison administrators. Our only sources of information came from an occasional newspaper or magazine being circulated, letters from loved ones, and a publication called Prison Legal News (PLN) that is put out by the Human Rights Defense Center. We were somehow able to glean bits of informational nourishment here and there, but never from those in charge.
I knew that by the first week of June there were 42,107 cases of the disease and over 500 deaths amongst the United States prison population. That breaks down to over 3,200 cases per 100,000 inmates. The COVID-19 infection rate among the incarcerated was nearly 6 times higher than the general public’s infection rate of just over 580 per 100,000.
According to an article in the August 2020 issue of PLN by Christopher Zoukis, by mid-July, seven of the 10 most significant outbreaks in the United States have occurred in jails and prisons. We were sitting around, poorly fed, lacking vitamins C and D, locked in our cells and feeling hopeless as we fully expected to get sick and die. By July 14, the federal BOP – the key holders of my incarceration – reported 5,181 inmates and 629 staff members had already recovered from COVID-19. Another 3,366 federal prisoners and 257 staff were newly positive. At least 95 inmates and one staff member had succumbed to the disease.
Finally, on September 21, 2020, inmates at USP Tucson (one of only a handful of protective custody compounds for transgender inmates, as well as sex offenders and former gang members who have given up that violent lifestyle) were beginning to regain a little bit of hope. We were allowed out of our cells for the majority of the day. We only left the unit to go pick up our lunch and return to “the flats” (a term used to describe being restricted to the housing unit, but not locked in our cells all day long), but it was the most “freedom” any of us had experienced in months. My morale began to rise as the mental anguish caused by cell confinement for 25 weeks, experiencing little to no sunshine on my skin, and enduring very limited privileges like commissary and programs, was replaced by expanded companionship and freer movement. It lasted exactly one month.
On October 21, an inmate in Unit C-2 tested positive for coronavirus and at 9:40 AM, the entire prison clamped down like a giant bear trap. Total lockdown. The kind of lockdown that allows for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (or bologna) twice a day, and a bowl of cereal each morning for breakfast. We were to get a five-minute shower every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. We didn’t receive another hot meal until October 27, then again a week later on November 3.
Also, on November 3, a full seven and a half months after the implementation of modified operations and institutional lockdowns, and more than 10 months after the first confirmed American coronavirus case, the administration at USP Tucson finally tested all of the inmates incarcerated within its walls. The next day, November 4, medical staff started doing daily temperature checks as the virus raged throughout the compound. No one in my housing unit ever contracted COVID-19. Our unit was the only one on compound that remained virus-free although the entire compound was under the same modified operations at that time.
It wasn’t until November 16 that we got back to three hot meals a day. A second coronavirus nasal swab test was administered on November 19. Daily temperature checks ceased completely on December 2. On December 3, a member of the psychology department finally made rounds for the first time since October 21. My unit had not been allowed commissary since October 8. (We were finally granted commissary on December 21.) Sanitation finally became a priority again on November 24, when “recovery unit” workers (inmates who had contracted the virus and recovered were housed together in recovery units) were allowed in to properly clean the showers.
I believe the hardest and most detrimental aspect of all of this (especially the second, more severe lockdown) has been not knowing. The lockdown itself has been difficult due to the loss of privileges, lack of familial contact, 22 to 24 hour a day nonstop cell confinement, and medical attention that can be called mediocre at best, but it has been the lack of communication by the prison administration and warden and that has made life feel so utterly hopeless.
Had I not heard it on the radio, I’d have not known of the three deaths here. (Possibly five.) Nor would I know about the more than 600 inmate recoveries and dozens of staff members who have beat back the “rona.” Between October 21 and December 21, the only contact my sequestered unit had with the outside world was done so through written communication. Letters were handed over to the unit counselor who reviewed, logged, and stamped the letters before placing them in the mailbox. All we could do was trust the system. It has been this system of modified operations implemented to mitigate COVID-19 that has been emotionally and psychologically debilitating. That anguish is exacerbated by the lack of access to adequate psychological and/or religious counseling.
I am penning this essay on Christmas Day, 2020. For me, it is really just another day spent locked in my cell, waiting for the nightmare that has been 2020 to end. It has taken all of the CBT methods I learned in CHALLENGE and a lot of mindful meditation to get this far. And although 2020 is coming to an end, modified operations continue. I do not expect it will end until after all inmates here receive the vaccination. Once again, the administration is hush-hush. A nurse came through the unit on December 10 and asked all of the high-risk inmates (a group of which I’m a member) if we wanted to receive the vaccine when or if it becomes available. I answered yes. One correctional officer says we will get the first shot in about a month. Another says maybe in April...
Of all my years in prison (this isn’t my first rodeo), and throughout the physical, emotional, and sexual abuse I’ve endured both inside and outside this atrocity known as the American criminal justice system, this year has been one of the most trying. Not since my traumatic childhood have I considered suicide so earnestly, but that would be much too simple it seems. After all, I do have a debt I intend to fully pay, even in the year of COVID.
Note: As of November 23, 2020, 3,624 BOP inmates and 1,225 BOP staff tested positive for coronavirus. Also, as of that date, 18,467 BOP inmates and 1,726 staff members had recovered from COVID-19.
Update:
On January 7, 2021, all the inmates in my unit were offered the Pfizer BioNTech
vaccine, and the overwhelming majority took it.
On January 28, we received the second injection in the series, and now
we are allowed on the flats for approximately five and a half hours per
day. We are still maintaining social
distancing and mask wearing procedures as well as a high quality of
sanitation. It does feel like the year
of COVID is beginning to wind down.
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