‘A powder keg waiting to explode’: COVID-19 and incarcerated women

Advocates for incarcerated women are sounding the alarm about an impending health crisis: COVID-19 spreading inside correctional facilities. In prisons, jails, and detention facilities there is little to no access to basic hygiene and supplies such as disinfectant soap, hot water, paper towels, clean laundry, and daily showers, making it impossible to maintain the level of cleanliness required to ward off this highly contagious virus and creating a fertile breeding ground for a pandemic.

“Incarcerated people often have to purchase hygiene items from the commissary at significant mark-up because the items provided are insufficient in quantity or quality — and often both,” said Lisa Graybill, deputy legal director for criminal justice reform at the Southern Poverty Law Center. “Many water faucets automatically turn off after just a few seconds. Cleaning products are often kept under lock and key. Incarcerated people do not have access to hand sanitizer because it has alcohol in it. Women have reported having to wash their underwear in the toilet [and] use rags, paper towels, and toilet paper to manage their menstrual flow because they don’t have adequate access to feminine hygiene products.”

Insufficient sanitary supplies have led to a dangerous power dynamic between incarcerated women and staff inside facilities where every year, 200,000 adults and children are sexually abused. “When sanitary items aren’t available, it gives leverage to abusive staff,” said Jesse Lerner-Kinglake, communications director at Just Detention International (JDI), a health and human rights organization advocating to end sexual abuse in all forms of detention. “Women who reach out to JDI describe instances in which they were forced to ‘trade’ sex for basic necessities. There’s certainly a fear among advocates that scarcity in soap at this moment, when hand-washing can be a life-saving measure, could give staff perpetrators even more power than they already have.”

Incarcerated women — like the general prison population — often enter the criminal justice system with myriad health issues. “There are high levels of heart disease, HIV, respiratory illnesses, the whole gamut of health problems, a high level of chronic illnesses,” said Maria Morris, senior staff attorney at the ACLU’s National Prison Project. To make matters worse, “the health care that people are receiving is not good. Most facilities don't offer healthy food. This is a really vulnerable population already. Many people come into facilities with prescribed medication, but often it gets changed to something cheaper or there are lapses of several weeks in refills once it runs out.”

In addition to underlying health issues, many incarcerated women have a history of abuse, often a contributing factor to their incarceration. “An enormous percentage — some research suggests as high as 85%-90% — of incarcerated women have experienced physical or sexual abuse prior to incarceration, and women are at heightened risk of abuse during incarceration,” said Graybill. “Many incarcerated women and LGBTQI individuals suffer from mental illness such as PTSD, depression, and anxiety, and frequently do not receive adequate psychological or psychiatric care. Women’s health issues are often overlooked during incarceration as well, and medical care is frequently unavailable or inadequate. COVID-19 will place an enormous burden on an already broken system. As staff get sick, there will be too few staff to manage facilities, facilitate movement, and help incarcerated people who are sick.”

Prisons, jails, and detention centers are largely dysfunctional facilities that are unable to provide even base-level care for incarcerated women, who are now put in the position of worrying not only for their own health, but also for that of their children and families on the outside. “A majority of incarcerated women are mothers,” said Kimberly Haven, the coalition and policy director of Reproductive Justice Inside, a Maryland-based sexual and reproductive health advocacy organization for incarcerated women. “This crisis makes it impossible to parent from the inside effectively. How do you comfort your children in this situation, when you can't allay your own fears? And what we've seen with other health initiatives, there is absolutely no accountability or transparency, no data collection, so you can't fight what you don't know. For instance, here in Maryland, we did not have a pregnancy policy. Therefore it is no wonder why there is certainly no pandemic policy.”

Although some politicians and officials are claiming that emergency measures are being taken to expand access to soap and cleaning supplies, and that units are being cleaned more often, advocates report there are still major lapses. In New York state, “we are hearing from incarcerated people that they do not have access to safety supplies like masks and gloves and that there are long delays in getting medical care,” said Miriam Goodman, director of alternatives to incarceration at the Women’s Prison Association. “There has also been a lot of confusion on the inside as to who is sick, how many people are sick, what should happen when someone is sick, et cetera. Women are generally really worried and scared. And unlike us in the community, bombarded with messages about this crisis, they are left very much to word of mouth and guessing, which can be terrifying in itself.”

Advocates urge speeding up efforts for de-carceration, and there are increasing calls and litigation for this around the country. Some cities and states are adopting initiatives to this end, such as allowing early release for the elderly or infirm, those with only a few months left of their sentences, and people being held for minor offenses; as well as not prosecuting for misdemeanors. But the steps that facilities are taking to mitigate the spread, including discontinuing programming and barring outside visits from family and attorneys, make life even more unbearable for incarcerated women. “The main response that we've seen to the COVID-19 crisis is to cut off visits,” said Morris. “But that doesn't cover the vast majority of people coming in and out of facilities every day: correctional officers, medical staff, et cetera. Cutting off visits is itself dangerous and harmful. In Italy, when they cut off visits in prisons, there were riots. And it’s really important for lawyers to be able to see their clients and monitor what is happening inside."

Losing family connections at any point would be painful, but in the middle of a life-threatening global pandemic, the emotional toll will be even harsher. “The loss of family visits and connections for women is devastating,” said Haven. “States can and must take steps now to ensure the continuation of parental bonds and continuity. They can do this by exploring alternative ways to stay connected — such as making phone calls free and unlimited and making video conferencing available, supplying free stamps and envelopes. This is not rocket science.”

Some places are resorting to barbaric measures to prevent community spread. “We are hearing reports from all over the country of staff not reporting to work and women in lockdowns or placed in solitary confinement or dry cells — ones without running water or toilets,” said Andrea James, executive director of the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls. “This is a powder keg waiting to explode. Using prisons and jails at the level that we do in this country is unsafe, and when you enter a prison you are already in a life-threatening situation. This is laying bare for all the world to see our complete inability to adequately respond to this crisis. We are all human beings, and we all deserve to be taken care of. It shouldn't be a death sentence to be inside a prison."