The current global pandemic can be, or likely already is, a life altering event for the citizens of our planet. Every single human is currently at war with an unseen enemy. Either we are fighting this virus directly after contracting it, or we are fighting to stay clean of it.
I fully understand and agree that the public’s health and safety comes first. Orders have been issued in various states, orders that restrict free citizen’s movements or indicate that we simply “shelter in place.” These orders are completely justfied as measures to protect public health and help stem the spread of the virus.
However, there is a huge discrepancy between the widespread application of those orders and what is happening behind bars in Virginia.
I am not a member of the free segment of the population. I am currently incarcerated at State Farm Enterprise Unit. I do not seek sympathy. I committed a crime years ago. I simply ask that I be treated as a combatant in the same battle everyone else is fighting. Unfortunately, I have been deprived the same tools that everyone else has been given to do so.
My housing unit (or floor) has 58 men on it, four phones, three showers, a water fountain, an email kiosk, and an ice machine. All are clearly highly shared surfaces necessary for daily survival. I also have a cell mate with whom I share approximately 70 square feet of a bathroom. Normally, unless it is a lockdown time, we are seldom in the cell together at once because it is so small. Parts of the facility are nearly 100 years old. It is without central ventilation and poorly maintained. There are two other floors in this building with nearly identical layouts except 20 more men and one less phone. Another 120 men live in single cells even smaller and more tightly packed in the building next door. Point being, social distancing is physically and logistically impossible here. If the virus gets in here the living situation is a powder keg waiting to explode.
Unfortunately, despite numerous public announcements of how much they are doing, taking “every precaution” and such, the Department of Corrections has so far failed to implement true safety measures. What they have announced on television, that they are screening everyone and keeping out nonessential personnel, is a fabrication. They are paying mere lip service to truly fighting this battle with us and for us.
So far, the only steps they have taken at this facility restrict our existence but fail to truly reduce the risk. They have canceled our family visits on the weekend, ended outdoor recreation time when all buildings and floors mingled, and began feeding us in our cells, all in the name of isolating each living area to ensure containment. All of this is reasonable in these times. Likewise, they have stopped transferring us between facilities. Also reasonable.
We are not going to infect ourselves, though. And these restrictions leave us locked in the cell and lacking our religious, educational, and recreational programs without effect because they have not imposed the same restrictions elsewhere. This facility houses four Virginia Correctional Enterprises, where companies makes millions annually doing necessary work cheap for state agencies using our labor for less than a buck an hour. These “shops” have remained open, even though they are not essential for survival. They are run by outside employees who are not security related and keeping them open involves congregating people from each living area together each day anyway. This defeats the health purposes of the separation rules that have hampered our few freedoms. It sure does feel like them cherry picking the elimination of things we enjoy and keeping the ones that make them money, regardless of the safety risk.
Additionally, contrary to their public statements on the news, NO extra measures have been put in place for the security staff and other employees coming in and out multiple times daily. I cannot speak for any other prison in this state, but here at SFEU when the employees enter they are not, NOT being screened, cleaned, or otherwise questioned. Their temperature is not taken. They are not sanitized, given masked, or even made to wash their hands before entering.
This is a case where I am already quarantined with about 350 other members of the human race. We are safe and secure from the virus by ourselves… until the very ones charged with keeping us secure and you safe are potentially delivering us the virus.
As of now, there are about 300 confirmed cases in Virginia. That will double within days, even more, if extra measures are not taken with staff coming in and out of here. That many more would happen just in here within a day or two. Once it does, there is nothing they can do about it other than lock us in our cells entirely with another sick person to fight this war with nothing more than running water and a toilet.
I am pleading with you as a fellow citizen of the world, a fellow combatant in this medical war, please do not sit by and do nothing. Provide the staff here the extra tools necessary to keep us safe and implement the measures to fully clean and sanitize them to maintain our existing quarantine from this virus. Insist that only truly essential employees enter, regardless of the profits lost on our labor. Treat our health like all other citizens of this state in this time of crisis. If not, most of us will fall ill. Many will suffer. Some will even die.
Thank you,
Unarmed