♪ ("LAST WEEK TONIGHT" THEME PLAYS) ♪
Our main story tonight concerns the coronavirus.
You know, the thing you have to regularly convince your parents
still exists.
"Oh you went to a Shony's, did ya?
Who else was there? The whole town?
Wow. Please stay inside you extremely fragile maniacs."
In recent weeks, there's been a series of alarming spikes
all over the country.
But one particular kind of place
has been getting hit especially hard.
Prisons are seeing an alarming spike.
Data collected by the
the number of inmates infected is above 68,000.
That's doubled over the last month.
Prison deaths tied to the virus
have risen by 73 percent since mid-May.
The five largest known clusters of the virus
are in correctional institutions.
Yeah. It's true. The five largest clusters
of coronavirus are correctional institutions.
Which is so terrible, it sounds like an announcement produced
by some sort of bad news generator that spits out
random sentences like,
"Confederate statue inks 10-episode deal with Quibi,"
or, "TikTok hamster charged with four counts
of vehicular manslaughter," or,
"Sean Hannity dating Ainsley Earhardt."
One of those is real, and it's the worst one.
And the facts that coronavirus is rampaging through prisons
and jails is especially alarming
given that there are 2.2 million people
being held in them across the country.
And inmates are generally a group
with higher health risks.
Between 1999 and 2016, the number of people 55 or older
in prison has increased 280 percent.
And people inside jails are more likely
to be immunocompromised with chronic health issues
like diabetes and hypertension.
So this is an immensely vulnerable population.
And inmates, very much know that as this advocate explains.
I personally am in contact with more than 300
people who are incarcerated.
They report to me day in and night out,
"Lewis, this is like me standing in the middle
of I-95 in New York.
Right in the middle of the road and cars zipping by me
at 117 miles an hour in both directions.
And it's just a matter of time before I'm hit with this thing.
Yeah, inmates feel like it's just a matter of time
before they get sick which is terrible.
Because we don't punish people by giving them diseases.
Take me for instance. I don't have Lyme disease
because of my 2008 public intoxication charge, no.
I have it because those deer,
knew how to fucking party back then.
I gotta be honest, I miss that crew.
So tonight, let's talk about a few things.
Why the coronavirus has spread so rapidly behind bars,
the impact that has on absolutely everyone,
and what we can and should be doing about it.
And just as a quick refresher, jails are where
people are detained while awaiting trial,
or held for minor sentences. While prisons typically hold
people who've been convicted and are serving sentences
of more than a year.
And whether you're in a jail or a prison,
you are probably in a facility that is in no way built
to cope with a crisis like this.
Because it's basically impossible to keep 6-feet apart
in a tiny cell.
As Ted Koppel found out a few years ago.
TED KOPPEL:
and social distancing
are mostly incompatible.
You don't have a hell of a lot of room in here.
You don't. You can only--
it's like one person can only move at a time.
Like if I'm-- this is...
we have to turn sideways.
Right, it's hard to practice social distancing
when you live in what's basically a closet
with two beds and a toilet.
In fact, I'd argue you can't practice most things
under those circumstances. Apart from games like,
"Let's try not to accidentally hug each other,"
and, "Who can poop the quietest?"
And incidentally the answer to that last question,
is Blake Lively. She poops the quietest,
that is simply, a fact.
And some of the steps authorities have taken
to deal with this problem are ridiculously small.
As this worried mother of one prisoner explains.
DEBORAH BETHEA:
for like, uh 23 and a half hours a day,
they get to come out for like ten minutes
and use the phone, and use, you know,
take a shower and then go back in.
And those small cells they're telling them,
"Sleep from head to foot."
But I mean, even if I'm head to foot
if you're in a small cell, it doesn't make a difference.
Exactly.
And that's probably not comforting
for a mother to hear, is it?
"Oh don't worry mom, all prisoners are instructed
to sleep head to foot. And when they're awake
we tell them to breathe in opposite directions.
We're pretty sure, we've got this covered."
Then there's the simple issue of soap.
As everyone knows by now, a key way to protect against
the coronavirus, is by regularly washing your hands.
But, in jails and prisons, soap may be rationed
or not available at all.
And if inmates need more,
they may have to buy it from the commissary.
And as we have covered before on this show,
despite doing most of the work to keep prisons
and jails running, inmates only make pennies for their labor.
In fact, some facilities have even posted signs
about the importance of hand washing,
but then continued to charge inmates for access to soap.
And multiple prisoners have felt that they needed
to go out of their way to try and alert the world
to this dangerous shortage.
This is what they gave us.
This little-ass thing of soap to stay clean
and like wash our hands and shit.
And this for every two weeks.
INMATE: They are not giving us hand sanitizer,
they're not giving us proper soap.
This is the soap dish that's in our bathroom.
It's just pieces of soap that everybody gotta wash
they're hands with.
We have two soap dispensers, but sometimes on the weekend,
the soap runs out.
That is clearly awful.
There should always be enough soap.
And I know if you wanted to do a decent parody of me,
you wouldn't be too far off if you slapped on a suit,
faked a British accent and went around shrieking
"There should always be enough soap!"
But, that doesn't make it any less true does it?
There should always be enough fucking soap.
And especially at that last facility, at which as of April,
about 80 percent of its residents
had contracted the virus.
And it's by no means
just cleaning products that are scarce.
PPE is in such short supply, that it's led to
prisoners wearing socks on their hands
when they use the phone.
Which might be the saddest sock puppet ever.
And testing has been so lacking, that inmates can't be confident
about who does, and doesn't have the virus.
And on top of that, if someone does show symptoms,
they're often placed in solitary confinement.
Because prisons have no where else to quarantine them.
And it's not a great incentive for inmates to come forward.
If your policy is basically, look,
"Just tell us that you're sick, and we'll put you
in the special punishment hole."
And when you take all of this together:
the close quarters, the lack of basic protections,
and the uncertainty about the spread
of a potentially deadly virus, it's honestly no surprise
that tensions can hit a breaking point.
Aight man this is what happens when the (CENSORED) coronavirus
is killing (CENSORED).
REPORTER:
an inmate took cellphone video inside the C-Block
of the Lanson Correction Facility.
Property destroyed, inmates out of their cells.
MAN: This (CENSORED) is really going on around here.
REPORTER:
(INMATE SHOUTING)
INMATE: Y'all don't wanna give us no healthcare?
Hey y'all don't wanna give us no healthcare?
This is what we do.
All you gotta do is give us some motherfuckin' healthcare.
Yeah, and if anyone is thinking that that's an extreme response,
I'd simply ask this: What else are they supposed to do?
What other bargaining chip do prisoners have
at their disposal right now?
This has actually been a bit of a recurring theme lately,
but I'll say it again, if it takes the destruction
of property for a system to pay attention to human lives
than we are in a dark fucking place.
And I know, that if you are fortunate enough to have
little to no familiarity with the prison system,
it can be easy to ignore this problem.
And that attitude is actually reflected
by some in local government.
In California, when an outbreak in a Santa Barbara prison
made it difficult for that county
to meet the state standards for reopening,
local officials proposed simply
not counting the prisoners.
With a county spokesman saying that individuals are not
out in the community, so...
(READS PROMPT)
Which is the kind of thing you should only really be saying
if there was a coronavirus outbreak in Atlantis.
Look, they don't even breathe air down there.
They're really a whole separate population.
And the director of the Arkansas Department of Health
tried to put an even more optimistic spin
on the prison outbreaks that they were having there.
These are high-risk settings where COVID-19 can spread
very easily, very rapidly, but they're also closed systems
and they don't necessarily represent, uh,
the situation in Arkansas in general.
The fortunate thing about that kind of setting is that it,
um, it's not that hard to contain it
because people aren't going out and about.
Um, they're not leaving the prison.
Okay. Even if prisons and jails were closed systems,
which they are very much not, for reasons we're about to
get into. It's weird to call outbreaks
of a deadly virus "fortunate" just because
they're confined to one place.
The news didn't go insane covering Balloon Boy
because they were stoked it was just one boy
contained in a homemade balloon, careening through the sky.
No, it was treated as an emergency
'cause there was a chance he was gonna fucking die!
Thankfully of course, uh, there turned out
to be zero boys in that balloon, as it was later revealed
to be a hoax pulled off by the boy's parents,
in order...
And holy shit, remember when balloon boy
was the craziest story you had to worry about?
2009 truly was a simpler time to be alive.
And look, for the record, people are absolutely
going out and about from prisons.
Because not everyone in a prison is in prison.
There are around 445,000 non-inmate staff personnel
working in prisons across the country.
And those workers have reported over 9,000 coronavirus cases.
We might as well be handing them coronavirus gift bags
as they leave work every day and head back out
into the community. And staff bringing the virus
in and out of facilities isn't the only way
that it can spread. It can hop from prison
to prison, as inmates are transferred around,
and it can also get out into the community
when sick prisoners are treated at local hospitals,
particularly in rural areas where hospitals
can easily get overwhelmed. And that is before
we get into jails, where there is a constant churn
of people moving in and out.
In a typical week...
...and another 200,000 walk out.
So, outbreaks in prisons and jails
can easily spread to the larger community.
In fact, one study suggested that as of mid-April,
more than...
...could be linked to just one facility,
the Cook County Jail.
And while the jail strongly disputes
those findings, there were activists
who saw the danger signs early on, like this man,
who was warning people back in March.
As of right now, Cook County Jail
is a virtual Petri dish. Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart,
he is the captain of a death cruise ship.
Wow... a death cruise ship. Look, cruise ships
are already comfortably bad enough,
without putting death into the equation.
It's like if our parent company re-branded themselves
as Genocide AT&T. Guys, guys,
I don't know how you could possible make a worse experience
than the one that you're already providing people.
The point here is, coronavirus doesn't stay
behind bars, it travels easily.
Which actually brings us to our final question:
What can we do? Well, realistically,
we need to be getting as many people out
of prisons and jails as possible.
Which is frankly, something we should
be doing anyway, but right now,
we really don't have much of a choice.
The fewer people in these facilities,
the easier it will be for those people
to socially distance, uh the fewer staff
you'll need on-site, and the lower your demand
for PPE. But, of course,
whenever anyone suggests releasing inmates,
this is the inevitable response.
The public just doesn't want to have a thousand burglars,
thieves, and, you know, identity forgers
and others out on the street. We've got enough--
problems watching our homes and businesses,
purses and wallets right now, we don't need any more of this.
All right. First off,
taxidermied George Lucas, you seem to be struggling
to think of more than one kind of criminal there.
Burglar, thief, identity forger,
those are all just synonyms for stealing.
What about all the other criminals in Texas?
Like the man who posed as a Beto O'Rourke volunteer,
broke into someone's home, and took a Popsicle.
Or the man who was forced to return 3,000 dollars
in prize money, for cheating
in Bass fishing contests. Or even,
a woman who drank wine out of a Pringles can,
while driving an electric cart around a Walmart parking lot
for several hours? Texas has a vibrant crime scene
with a lot more variety than you're frankly giving it
credit for. And I'd argue
that there are some people we have no excuse
for not releasing immediately.
Especially those awaiting trial in jail,
who pose little risk to public safety,
and are only there because they couldn't afford
to post bail. And, look,
I am not saying that every person who's let out
due to the coronavirus will behave perfectly.
No one can say that. And I'm sure that you will see
people on TV excitedly citing
isolated cases of people who were released
and then did bad things.
You'll see that on shows like...
...or...
But on balance, the risks of carefully
letting people out are vastly outweighed
by the risks of leaving everyone inside.
As for prisons, the bare minimum
we should do is release offenders
who've served the majority of their sentences.
Particularly, the immunocompromised
and the elderly. Those groups are at high risk
for the virus, and the elderly are also
a very low risk to re-offend.
We could also place certain prisoners on furlough,
basically pausing their sentence,
and having them return to finish it
once the pandemic is under control.
Or you can place them under house arrest.
And at the national level, to his,
and I can't believe I'm going to say this, credit,
Attorney General Barr released a DOJ memo,
instructing federal prisons to reduce their populations.
Which sounds like a great idea, in theory.
But, to date, they've only done that
by around three percent. Which is even worse
than the typical state prison, because they've reduced
their population by just five percent.
And that's simply not enough.
And I know this might put you in the uncomfortable situation
of having to argue on behalf of people
you might not find inherently sympathetic.
Take the case of one federal prisoner
who pushed hard to be released.
A judge has rejected convicted
pharmaceutical executive, Martin Shkreli's request
to be let out of a prison to research
a coronavirus treatment. The presiding judge noted
that probation officials viewed that claim
as the type of, quote, delusional behavior
that led to his conviction in the first place.
Yeah. Martin Shkreli,
the pharma bro tried to get released to home arrest
so that he could work on developing a cure
for the coronavirus. Presumably, so he could call it
Rona Juice and then sell it for five thousand percent more
than it should cost. And he was denied.
And when you hear that, you might think, good,
fuck that guy. And generally, yeah,
fuck that guy. But in this instance,
despite the fact that Martin Shkreli
is an attention-starved tree frog,
who clearly wasn't held enough as a tadpole,
and despite his reasoning for why he should be released
being complete bullshit, I don't want him
to contract the virus and potentially die from it.
I don't want that for anyone, none of us should.
And yet, right now, millions of Americans
are currently stuck in truly desperate straits,
and vastly disproportionally, people of color.
And some prisoners have become so desperate
they will risk punishment to try and get anyone
in the outside world to pay attention
to their situation. Just watch this prisoner
openly using a contraband cellphone,
which he knows will lead to consequences
to try and raise an alarm.
AARON CAMPBELL: This motherfucker over here dying from corona,
they got this motherfucker in my room.
They literally leaving us in here to die.
NARRATOR:
He's an inmate at FCI Elkton,
a low security federal prison in Ohio.
He's using a contraband cellphone,
and he knows he's gonna get in trouble
for making this video.
No, I absolutely do not want that.
And I have to tell you, the authorities at that prison
have said that the men in that video
were actually completely fine, and neither were sick.
Although, you should also know, that by
the government's own count, at that one,
low-security institution, more than 600 inmates
have tested positive for coronavirus,
and nine have died.
And if you're wondering how that prisoner is doing,
he's reportedly been in solitary
since that video went viral in early April.
And he wrote a letter to reporters
saying that officials told him...
A request he then refused. Which is incredibly brave.
And that's coming from me, a man who has never missed
an opportunity to say, "I'm sorry"
for literally anything. So at this point,
it's worth asking: What the fuck are we doing here?
Particularly during this pandemic,
but also in general. Because there's obviously
a much larger discussion to be had
about how millions of people ended up incarcerated
in the first place, and whether or not
prisons even work. Which I would argue,
they absolutely do, if your only goal
is to have a lot of people in prison.
The fact is, we should be de-populating
prisons and jails as quickly as we can right now.
And I know how that sounds, because we were all raised
hearing that you shouldn't do the crime
if you can't do the time. But in our current system,
you're never just being sentenced to time.
You're being sentenced to a lifetime of social stigma,
futile job interviews, and roadblocks
to necessities like housing.
All of that is immoral enough, there is frankly
no reason whatsoever we should now also be sentencing
people to die from a virus. Because that's not justice,
it's neglect. And it really matters.
Because as much as we'd like to pretend
that incarcerated people are a separate population,
they're not. Whatever they've done,
they are still members of our society.
And if this horrific year has taught us one thing,
it's that we are all on this
death cruise ship together.