#CagingCOVID: Stopping the Spread Behind Bars

While the world is trying to flatten the curve of a pandemic without end in sight, U.S. prisons and detention centers continue to be COVID-19 hotspots, warehousing millions and failing to make the substantial populations reductions needed to create conditions of social distance.

#CagingCOVID is a campaign to shine a light on mass incarceration in a time of a public health crisis, and apply pressure to use parole, clemency and decarceration at local and federal levels to stop the spread of the virus behind bars.

Use this form to report Covid related conditions inside

 

Call our 24 hour hotline to tell us your story about Covid-19 and incarceration at 910-604-6519

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They've Got 300 Men In The Showers At One Time

Nov 19, 2020 | by Laura Bratton

Audio Submission By, Renee Dagley About Ricardo Peña III

Amended Audio Transcription

My fiance, he’s been incarcerated 12 years on a 30 year sentence. He’s a Coffield Unit in Tennessee Colony, Texas, and they’re not doing anything for the covid. They’re not social distancing. For shower-time, they’ve got three hundred men in a shower at one time. No social distancing. They do not make them wear masks. They wipe down the phones, but that’s about it.

He’s miserable. My baby has been tested twice. The first time, he was positive. They pretty much just put him in isolation. That was it. They’re not giving them fruits and vegetables or very rarely.

It was miserable. He couldn’t call me. He was in isolation and pretty much in a cell with the celly. So it wasn’t really isolation. And they put him back with other people that tested positive. So it doesn’t do anything.

He wanted me to file a complaint, but I don’t know how to do any of that. He sounds really depressed. He cries. I could hear his tone. He’s been waiting six months minimum to get new shoes. They don’t care about the prisoners. If they get sick, they don’t care.

And it hurts. Because he tells me what’s going on there, and there’s nothing I can do. Please take this covid seriously and please help these men.

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