Report on Covid In Prison by Kyle N.

Mykel,

Prison in the Covid Crisis
by Kyle N.

You asked about how the Department of Corrections deals with the Corona virus in prison. Here's my answer:

The Oregon D.O.C. refuses to test for the most part, unless it's an extremely obvious case. Flu/allergy season becomes a fucking witch hunt.

D.O.C. is fucked. Corrections officers are on their feet all day. Back problems, feet problems. Chronic pain is a problem in this field... so they take anti-inflammatory drugs regularly. Because of that, their fever symptoms are significantly masked.

If an inmate tests or shows signs of COVID, they go to quarantine. They (the prison administration) emptied out The Hole... I don't know where the inmates from the hole went, but if you're showing symptoms, you now go to the hole on quarantine status... lose your job, housing and property and get locked down 24 hours a day. So if a dude's sick, it's not likely he's going to tell anybody. Otherwise he'll go to the hole.

I'm in "Honor Housing." All the Oregon corrections enterprise slave labor is in my unit. The Oregon Department of Motor Vehicle's "customer service" line is manned/staffed by inmates.

The Oregon Corrections print shop workers make all the fliers and forms for all the state government offices... like the pamphlets that tell you how to apply for food stamps or file for unemployment.

So if dudes in my unit get sick, Oregon DMV and a bunch of state public assistance offices have serious fucking issues. This has a negative effect on the state government and the public. It negatively effects Oregon State financially if inmates in my unit get sick.

My unit also houses all the plumbers, cooks, and electrical repair welders. So if they're sick, shit in the prison that breaks can't be fixed. So because it's in the interests of non-prisoners and negatively effects real people, Honor Housing prisoners are treated better.

In the general population, the inmates are disposable human waste that serve no useful function to the administration, so their heads are on the fucking chopping block.

Kyle