The incarcerated men of Marion Correctional Institution in Ohio began a food strike on May 6, protesting deteriorating meal services as COVID-19 continues to sweep through the prison. Marion is home to one of the most concentrated coronavirus outbreaks in the U.S.
As calls for mass release grew louder in the state capital, the 86 men held in 5-Dorm announced a food strike, refusing to eat the two meals provided by the prison staff each day. According to state records, 1,353 inmates and 175 staff members at Marion have tested positive for COVID-19, and 12 inmates and one staff member have died.
Austin Cox, 22, incarcerated at Marion since November 2019, says that inmates were still being served three meals when quarantine procedures began in late March: a bagged breakfast, a hot lunch and a bagged dinner. Now, daily meals have dwindled to a hot lunch (now called “brunch”) and a bagged dinner (like a bologna sandwich). A recent video on social media showed what a typical brunch looks like: cereal, gravy and two biscuits. What makes it “brunch,” according to the inmate on video, is the fish patty on top.
The food strike takes aim at the paltry nutrition and the broader encroachment on inmates’ health and safety as the spread of the disease continues.
“We don’t deserve to be treated like we’re not people just because we’re incarcerated,” Cox says in a phone interview. “They’re treating us like we’re animals. I look at it as: We don’t deserve to be treated like that here. We’re still people.”
Cox has so far tested negative for COVID-19. Twice. He’s one of only six inmates in his dorm who still haven’t caught the disease. He washes his hands, he sneezes into his shirt. He tries to stay away from people’s faces, but he’s not long on options to protect himself.
The bunks in Marion’s dorms are maybe four feet apart from one another, Cox ballparks, so there’s really no chance to match the physical distancing that’s been mandated through public policy or social norm elsewhere in society. “We have very little space,” he says.
Despite the relatively increased scrutiny on how prisons are handling the health and safety of incarcerated individuals, Cox says that the atmosphere is fairly noncommittal. Staff members ask if inmates would like to wear face masks. But daily temperature checks stopped on April 27. The food strike is meant to sharpen the focus on this problem. It’s not unique to Marion, but that prison in the central, rural flatlands of the state is where certain political attention in Ohio has gathered in recent weeks.
“We all kind of came together as a group, sticking together,” Cox says. “We’re supposed to stick together in here.”
The COVID-19 pandemic has shined a light on prisons to a degree that’s rare for mainstream news media coverage. These facilities are obvious hotbeds for contagious disease. In Ohio, prison inmates and staff members comprise 20% of the state’s COVID-19 cases. Elsewhere, in Arkansas, the ratio is further distorted. Many inmates have filed emergency motions for release, requesting some sort of judicial reprieve and a temporary escape from the confines of prison.
“They’re treating us like we’re animals,” Cox says. “They’re kind of just keeping us contained in a very confined space all together, and they’re expecting this not to spread when there’s already been 10 inmates who’ve died in this facility from COVID-19. So, to not stop it from spreading, they’re going to keep people who are negative with people who are positive? That belittles me. I don’t understand their thinking process. How is that smart in any way, shape or form?”
With little in the way of relief, he adds that a general food strike is one of the few options available. Now, the men in 5-Dorm are trying to share the message to others at Marion. But with very little interaction among dorms and cell blocks, due to quarantine protocol, that’s no small task.
The verbiage here is important, too. This is a “food strike,” meaning that participating inmates in 5-Dorm and elsewhere are refusing the prison’s meals. (A “hunger strike” is when people stop eating at all, starving themselves.) Inmates in 5-Dorm are cooking their own meals from products purchased through the commissary. On the first day of the strike, Cox and others cooked rice and soup for the other guys who didn’t go down to the chow hall. “Everybody got to eat a bowl,” he says.
Earlier this year, the ODRC distributed a memo of “Hunger Strike Facts” to inmates, a reiteration of policies first enacted in 2017. According to the memo, “If you refuse 9 documented meals, you are on hunger strike. You will be moved to P1 in a safe cell. You will have labs drawn.”
Azzurra Crispino, the wife of a Marion Correctional inmate and a prison abolition advocate, says that the memo is one of the more “draconian” stances toward hunger strikes that she’s seen among U.S. state prison systems.
“Your concerns will not be addressed while you are refusing meals,” the memo states. “You will not receive a bed move. … Forced medical care can and will be utilized, if necessary, to ensure health safety and prevent irreversible damage to the body or death. … You will not receive any special or expedited treatment because you are on hunger strike.”
Kevin Keith, 59, is another incarcerated man participating in the food strike. His 1994 murder conviction remains the subject of a habeas petition in federal court in Cleveland, and, in March of this year, he had filed an emergency motion for release, citing an “unprecedented health emergency” at Marion. A federal judge wrote: “The Court is mindful that circumstances faced by this country in general, and [Keith] as well as other prisoners specifically, are certainly extraordinary. But [Keith] has not shown his particular circumstances to be ‘exceptional’”
Since then, Keith has tested positive for COVID-19.
His brother, Charles Keith, is a longtime advocate for Kevin’s innocence and for the abolition of the death penalty in Ohio. He says he tried to talk Kevin out of the food strike for his own safety, but Kevin insisted.
Charles says that Kevin made it clear during a May 5 phone call, the night before the food strike began, saying: “’You’ve got to understand: When you’re behind bars like this, everything’s on principle.’”
This article appears in May 6-12, 2020.
I used to work at Marion Correctional Institution, and in 5-Dorm. What is not mentioned in this article is inmates keep food in their lock boxes they buy from the prison commissary and what they get from food boxes. What also is not being said is how inmates are being pressured by inmate leaders, even though inmates aren’t supposed to have leaders, into participating in the food strike.
Inmates who have food are also probably being pressured into giving it up or sharing it with other inmates.
If the inmate leaders get this off, expect more organized inmate “special incidents”– or which civilians call civil disobedience– over any and all of a host of inmate complaints.
The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction should send in the SRT and STAR Teams to ensure that inmates can eat safely and out of the view of other inmates. This can be done by sending inmates alone to various locations, like the Captain’s office, the Chief of Security’s Office, the Deputy Wardens’ offices, etc… and allowing inmates the opportunity to eat without being seen by any other inmate under the pretense of being interviewed by prison staff.
What ODRC prison inmates are supposed to do if any has any complaint, which can be about any institutional or ODRC matter, is file an informal complaint. If the inmate is not satisfied with the written response, and the responses are written, the inmate can file a formal inmate grievance with the institutional inspector. If the inmate is still not satisfied with the written response, the inmate can appeal to the ODRC Chief Inspector at Central Office. The inmate can also complain to the Correctional Institution Inspection Committee (CIIC), which is composed of members of the Ohio General Assembly.
What ODRC prison inmates are not supposed to do is organize strikes or any type of collective civil disobedience. ODRC should transfer the ringleaders to Lucasville or OSP, because what is really at stake is whether inmates can get what they want through a collective inmate disturbance.
This may seem minor to some, but giving in to prison inmate ringleaders’ demand can lead to a prison riot– and during a prison riot, the people most at risk are other prison inmates.
If you don’t believe this, google the deaths at the Easter Sunday Lucasville Prison Riot at SOCF.
Feed a virus…starve a virus. What to do?
These are YOUR untended consequences for the crime(s) that YOU decided to commit.
Deal with it. And if you mechanism for dealing with it is starving yourself to death, I’d call that a win for the taxpayers/citizens that figured out howto get through life without becoming a felon.
Why not just release all of these prisoners out onto the streets of Cleveland???
They will all fit right in with all of the murders, shootings, carjackings, and burglaries that take place around here on a daily basis anyway!!!
Give them McDonals for all three meals. Eat it or starve.
Memo to Shiwaku Seven …………. U simply don’t Know enough.
The Southern Ohio Correctional Facility referred to as Lucasville ???????
The main causes of the prison rebellion were serious overcrowding and mismanagement of the facility and Muslim frustration stemming from mandated tuberculosis testing.
The rebellion ended after 11 days with Prison officials agreed to review the prisoners’ complaints
A class action was brought against the state officers, administrators and staff by a legal team on behalf
of the inmate victims of the rebellion.
The state paid $4.1 million to settle the claims of the victims and agreed to a number of non-monetary terms as well, to remedy the overcrowding and mismanagement of the facility.
u think as a Model Minority that make u exempt from White Supremacy???
but u will LEARN differently!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Memo to War Horse: You should know better than to assume. I got news for you– that is, I went to Luke during the 1993 Easter Sunday Riot, and I also helped with the evacuation of K-Block inmates from Luke to TCI when the riot went on. I also supervised hostage takers in R-Block at MCI, which is where the worst discipline cases went instead of O-Block, which is where most AC/LC/DC/SC inmates went.
One of the hostage-takers tried to take my hostage, but I fought him off.
The TB testing is what set the Black Muslims at Luke off, but the Luke Easter Sunday Riot also involved the Aryan Brotherhood, who didn’t care about the TB testing.
Back them, DRC prisons allowed inmate imans, or religious leaders, and the SOCF iman erroneously thought that TB tests violated Sharia or Muslim religious law, even though it didn’t.
One of the changes that resulted because of the Lucasville Easter Sunday Riot was the banning of prison inmate imans, free weights (which was used to kill during the riot), and the elimination of the $5 that was put on each DRC inmate’s account during the month of December as a Christmas gift. The reason for the latter was to help defray the cost of paying damages and rebuilding SOCF.
If you ask some lifers, they may still remember the $5 DRC put on inmate accounts before the Easter Sunday SOCF Riot.
My point was that when a riot occurs, the vast majority of victims are prison inmates– and not just the 9 inmates who were killed by SOCF inmates during the Easter Sunday Lucasville Riot, but also all of the SOCF inmates who lost property and went through the hardships of being in the riot, which included being forced to strip naked after the riot was over and having the water shut off in the prison when the riot was going on.
I know a lot more about the Luke Riot and MCI that I am saying– and that includes 5-Dorm.
If you are an ex-DRC inmate, you should already realize that weak inmates are being pressured by stronger inmates to give up their commissary and food box items and to go along to get along.
What you don’t seem to know is that prison inmates cannot be allowed to control prisons and a hunger strike is an attempt to control prison operations.
if the head of the prisons was really honest she would have told the truth about not looking into what is really happening in the prisons and the inmates are not humans to them . where can we are parents and love ones get the word out so that they the help they need just like the nursing homes and other congregate setting this is not right and she got on TV AND OUT RIGHT LIED EVEN SHEDTEARS FOR THE NURSE THAT DIED how fake was that
Don’t be fooled by this latest attempt by prison inmates to try to obtain early release from prison.
The goal of ODRC is to protect, help, and encourage prison inmates to reenter society as productive citizens. This is why “reentry” and a multitude of “programs” have been created and are ran to help and encourage prison inmates better themselves. What makes prison so bad is not the food, housing, or prison staff, but instead prison inmates trying to get over and take advantage of other inmates.
Most people are unaware that prison inmates in Ohio get the opportunity to buy and eat ice cream, cookies, outside restaurant food from special food sales and special events, play video games, and engage in a host of recreational opportunities that most people would be surprised to learn is offered in prison.
It is understandable that almost all prison inmates don’t want to do their full prison sentences, but the plain truth is that their prison sentences has saved many of their lives, because their prison sentences makes it much harder for them to overdose on illegal drugs. Even if they do sometimes overdose, because prison inmates’ families and friends sometimes smuggle illegal drugs into Ohio prisons, it is prison staff that will administer Narcan and CPR to save their lives and do whatever they can to get them medical treatment.
Since a very large percentage of prison inmates have drug addictions, releasing them early will cause many of them to die– if not by overdose from deadly fentanyl and carfentanil, by violent crime in their attempt to do whatever they can to feed their illegal drug addictions.
I am already retired from ODRC, so I have no proverbial skin in this game, but I am someone who will reveal the truth about ODRC matters for the public good.
Less than 1% mortality rate! What seems to be the problem?
The old ghetto response: I don’t like da housin da govermet built me, so I burnt it down.
I Don’t like that they feedin me less often, so I will not eat they food!
Make sense to you?