The news arrived in inmates’ JPay inboxes less than three days after they’d learned that one of the Lieutenants there had tested positive for the virus. It was the first confirmed case among staffers or inmates in the Ohio prison system.
That first confirmed case sounded alarm bells for criminal justice advocates and family members of current inmates, who alerted Scene that the virus was, in all likelihood, rapidly spreading at Marion. The facility is Level 2, or minimum security, prison where inmates congregate in large groups often and sleep in bunks with 120-200 men to a dorm.
“It’s physically impossible to isolate,” the wife of one current inmate told Scene this week. “When they go into the day room, there’s no way. The phones aren’t even six feet apart. You can’t socially distance.”
The virus was expected to spread among staff. The Lieutenant who tested positive worked in multiple areas of the prison and, according to a press release from the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, last worked a shift at Marion on March 24.
Gov. Mike DeWine said Monday that nine officers had been asked to quarantine as part of a trace investigation, and four were exhibiting symptoms consistent with COVID-19.
Now that two additional officers have tested positive, the inmates are getting uneasy, a prison advocate named Candace Hudson told Scene. Hudson runs an organization called Understand Before You Judge and has been communicating with multiple inmates at Marion via JPay emails.
“The main concern is that there is no social distancing,” she said, summarizing inmate comments to Scene. “Their beds are less than three feet apart and the men are piled on top of each other, especially in the chow hall. [The Warden is] telling them to continue to wash their hands but they aren’t being provided soap, and not everyone can afford to purchase soap at the commissary. Visibly sick prisoners are not being taken to medical or quarantined. Staff are not addressing their concerns or taking proper precautions. Approximately 14 new staff came in and were shaking the guys down and touching their property.”
Azzurra Crispino, the founder of a prison support organization who spoke to Scene previously and whose husband at Marion has four months left to serve, said that inmates have now been given cloth masks, which are optional to wear. She said her husband told her that multiple corrections officers were beginning to display symptoms, and that if enough staffers test positive, at least one officer has said that staff will stop coming in and the facility will be forced to operate under stricter lockdown.
In spite of clear indications of the coronavirus’ spread, systematic testing—or any testing—among the inmate population doesn’t appear to have started at Marion. Neither Warden Wainwright nor a spokesperson for ODRC responded to multiple questions about the latest confirmed cases and additional testing Wednesday.
In previous similar communications, an ODRC spokesperson reiterated the department’s safety protocols, which include closing off facilities to visitors, volunteers and some contract workers, and directed Scene to its daily updates.
As of Wednesday afternoon, a total of 27 inmates had been tested statewide, an average of exactly one inmate per prison. Twenty-five of those tests have come back negative. Two are pending.
Wainwright did not mention testing in her brief JPay email to Marion inmates. After informing them that the two staffers who’d tested positive were “doing well,” she said that various concerns about the prison commissary and ARAMARK-provided meals were being addressed.
“Please continue to practice handwashing and focus on social distancing,” the message concluded. “I will keep you updated as information becomes available.”
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This article appears in Apr 1-7, 2020.
Wow soooooo contagious. By the math of the leaders there should be hundreds of cases there within a week.
Understanding after they’re judged? I can’t conjure up any sympathy for folks who committed crimes that they are now locked up for. Bad timing on the criminal’s and the pandemic’s fault, I guess. I’m all for concentrating resources on the folks on the outside. The pandemic inside will be contained among the prisoners.
You can’t conjure up any sympathy for folks who committed crimes. Hmmm, so then it could be said that people can’t conjure up sympathy for people such as yourself. Do you realize that you may just be one mistake away from being in a place like that? They are human just like you. Yes, maybe they made mistakes in their life and found themselves in there being punished for what they did wrong. But how many rules have you broken in your lifetime? That does not mean that they deserve to be treated like animals or be looked upon as expendable. They all have families and friends that care about them. And heaven help someone such as yourself if you make a mistake that puts you in that place because it happens every day. That is why you should UNDERSTAND BEFORE YOU JUDGE!!!!
^ The folks in jail did not make one mistake. You make one mistake you get probation or a non jail plea deal. You end up in jail after you make a number of bad choices.
I don’t want them, or anyone to get Covid, and I do not want them to die. But they put themselves in this position through a series of bad decisions.
Well, that still applies. Because everyone and I do mean everyone makes more than one bad choice in their life. They are paying for their bad choices. Too many people want to act like they are perfect but then the skeleton’s in their closet would prove otherwise. Not only are their people in there that should have been released already but there are also people that were wrongfully convicted and are stuck In a system that they shouldn’t be in but yet everyone just wants to assume that they are all terrible.
I use to work for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction and at Marion Correctional Institution as a correction officer. DRC prison inmates are issued state soap free of charge. Ohio Prison Industries make the soap. Prison inmates who don’t want to use it can buy brand name soap at the prison commissary. Every DRC prison inmates gets state pay, which includes those who have money deducted from their state pay for legal reasons (court costs, fines, etc.) Even those inmates on legal are allowed a certain amount of money to buy personal items, like soap, toothpaste, toothbrush, etc. If they still don’t have soap, they can go to their unit manager or chaplain and ask for soap and other personal hygiene items.— that is, if they don’t ask their dorm or cellblock correction officer to look for extra bars of soap hoarded by other prison inmates in their lockbockes, desk drawers, and trash cans.
As a former State of Ohio correction officer, I think it is a good idea to keep MCI inmates locked up and to keep the entire prison under quarantine to prevent MCI inmates from spreading Covid-19 to other prisons. Transferring MCI inmates to other DRC prisons will foreseeably help Covid-19 to spread to the prisons MCI inmates are transferred to. Releasing MCI inmates early will foreseeably help Covid-19 to spread to the Ohio communities the MCI inmates are released to. Any MCI inmates released due to expiration of sentence should be required to do a 14-day quarantine.
It is only a matter of time before every DRC prison has staff and inmates contracting Covid-19.
Medical experts are predicting that 40 to 70 percent of the U.S. population will eventually contract Covid-19, so a mass evacuation of the Marion Correctional Institution is not the solution to this problem.
Containing this Covid-19 problem at MCI makes more sense than spreading it to other DRC prisons and to many Ohio communities.
What I like to know as a former State of Ohio correction officer is whether the correction lieutenant, who contracted Covid-19, did supervisory rounds to every MCI post during the work shifts he worked at.
Clevescene should ask for copies of every MCI post log entries for the work shifts the lieutenant worked, which is supposed to document when supervisors makes rounds. The lieutenant is supposed to sign the visitor logbook for every post he or she visits. Clevescene can requests copies of each prison post’s visitor’s logbook entries for the days the lieutenant to under an Ohio Public Records Request. A supervisor is supposed to do unannounced supervisor rounds at every prison post during his or her work shift. If this occurred, every MCI staff member the lieutenant checked on may have been exposed to Covid-19 as well as other prison supervisors who was briefed by or who briefed the lieutenant.
Right now there are thousands of law abiding Ohioans outside of prison who need and can’t get Covid 19 testing. Using some of those scarce tests for prisoners who currently have no symptoms is a misuse of those tests.
Also right now there are thousands of people around the country who aren’t taking social distancing seriously, thus jeopardizing everyone else. What make’s anyone think that people is prison, who have already showed massive contempt for laws and behaving properly are now are going to be model social distancing citizens if let out.
It’s too bad the situation that they are in, but it’s safer for the rest of if they stay where they are and not be given a chance to be antisocial again out in public with the current situation.