“Jails and prisons are often dirty and have really very little in the way of infection control,” said Homer Venters, former chief medical officer at New York City’s notorious Rikers Island jail complex. “There are lots of people using a small number of bathrooms. Many of the sinks are broken or not in use. You may have access to water, but nothing to wipe your hands off with, or no access to soap.”.
An Ohio prisoner’s wife told JLUSA her husband passed on May 2 from COVID-19. He was not provided proper medical care initially. When finally moved to a hospital, it was too late to intervene, and he died in under a weekThe prison facility did not even have a plan in place to notify his family—his wife learned of his death from others within the prison.
“He was not sentenced to death by the judge,” she said, “but by the governor and elected officials’ inability and unwillingness to act.”aren’t a new addition to life behind bars—they’ve just been exemplified by the pandemic. “History, time and time again, has shown us that the lives inside of those facilities were not considered,” Hoskins said.