On Monday, April 6, an inmate at Indiana’s Plainfield Correctional Facility stayed up late. From his bunk, he composed two messages. In the first, he told his son that he loves him, that he’s proud of him.
In the second message, he told his wife he was scared. “I can tell you right now, nearly 100% certainty, that I am going to get this virus,” he wrote. The man’s wife says he suffers from lung disease, which could increase the chances of complications from COVID-19.
“I just need you to know how sorry I am for not being there … during these scary uncertain times,” he wrote. “If I don’t getta come home please always know that you are and always will be the love of my life.”
Two days later, the man told his wife that for the first time, prison staff took the temperatures of the men in his quarters. Some of the prisoners had fevers, including one who slept right next to him, but were kept in the dorm with dozens of other men. ”He is about 3 ft. from me right now,” he wrote. He wrote again after midnight to tell her the prisoners with fevers were finally removed.
Outside of correctional settings, federal, state and local officials are urging people to hunker down. People are staying at least six feet apart, wearing masks and regularly washing or sanitizing their hands, along with surfaces they touch.
The Indiana Department of Correction says it is taking measures to prevent the spread of coronavirus among the more than 26,000 inmates housed in the state’s 21 facilities. That includes supplying hand sanitizer to inmates and isolating anyone who exhibits COVID symptoms.
But accounts from inmates and their relatives contradict the agency’s claims. They say inmates are kept in tight quarters where they are unable to wash or sanitize their hands, or clean surfaces that could harbor the virus. And they say prison staff aren’t taking proper care to prevent the spread of the virus.
“That’s illustrative of what’s happening across the country in county jails and departments of corrections,” says Lauren-Brooke Eisen of the Brennan Center for Justice in New York. Nationally, more than 1,300 prisoners have been infected, according to a recent analysis from the New York Times, and dozens have died.
Eisen isn’t surprised that the virus has spread so quickly in American jails and prisons: “They really are petri dishes for transmission of diseases such as COVID-19.”
In Indiana, 27 inmates in seven prisons have tested positive for COVID-19, along with 48 staffers. The state, which only takes questions via email, did not answer when asked how many people had been tested.
Side Effects spoke with family members of prisoners in multiple facilities, including the Plainfield Correctional Facility, the Branchville Correctional Facility, and the Heritage Trail Correctional Facility — all three of which have confirmed COVID-19 cases. We heard recordings of prisoners speaking with their wives about their experiences — and even spoke on the phone with an inmate in the Indiana Women’s Prison. (Side Effects is omitting the inmates' names and the last names of their family members due to their concerns that the inmates would be punished for speaking out.)
All of them expressed fear and frustration.
The Plainfield prisoner’s wife, Lisa, worries about her husband. “I am so terrified, and I feel helpless. I don’t know what to do,” she told Side Effects.
Her husband went to prison a year ago for driving on a suspended license, theft and resisting arrest. He could be released as early as June 2021.
“Yes, they committed a crime and they were sentenced,” she says. “But they weren’t sentenced to death.”