Imagine being in a 1600 sq foot dorm room with 64 other men. A 5 ft high partition runs down the center of the room with bunks on either side, men’s heads literally butted up against the wall and each other………
Each side of the room has a 3 foot wide aisle that runs the length of the room separating the bunks into 4 rows, one on each side of the room, and the two rows that butt up against the partition. There is little more than 3 feet between the bunks and those against the center divider are nearly touching. A man in the center of the room has 11 inmates within 6 feet. In good times the windows which line the exterior provide ventilation and sunlight. There’s a 4-toilet bathroom with sinks and showers that service the dorm and 4 rooms. There is less space per inmate in the rooms. It’s tragic in the best of times.
Men are locked in these quarters from 10 at night until 7 in the morning, but because Lompoc is now in a total lockdown, they are confined to the dorm for most if not all day. Bureau of Prison (BOP) guidelines call for an hour a day of recreation time, so I am guessing that the men are let out for an hour a day. I have also been told that their meals are being delivered to their dorms which makes the situation that more untenable. I can only assume that every inmate has daily exposure and that the infection rate must be close to 100%.
The medical clinic is staffed by a doctor and a foreign medical technician. All credentials are suspect. The technicians were mostly Filipino, some helpful and some not. Words used to describe the clinic are not printable. We were treated as numbers, readily disposable.
Even though half the population of 1500 inmates is considered non-violent, no one leaves the institution without two guards. Inmates are handcuffed and shackled, driven in a van to the hospital or medical appointment. There are no ventilators and maybe a couple bottles of oxygen and certainly no ICU at the prison. At the hospital they are shackled to the bed and a guard stationed in their room. In the four plus years of my tenure in this lovely place, an inmate died every few months, but never in the institution. They always died on the way to the hospital, even though multiple eye-witnesses would testify otherwise.
Don’t believe for a second that men with medical conditions are being released like Paul Manafort. I witnessed men in their 80s dying of cancer as their sentences were set to expire. Men are dying. But we will likely never know how many. All phones and email services have been shut down so that loved ones have no idea how their husbands, fathers and brothers are doing. The last letter I received from my friend didn’t say much, likely because it was unsealed and censored. John, a man with no previous record and a history of respiratory illness, was serving his 18th year in prison for an interstate domestic terrorist charge, by verbally threatening his ex-wife.
His handwritten note:
“My Dear Brother
Greetings I hope all is well with you
Not so good here if you do not
Hear from me in a month I got
Covid-19 & Died at least you know
Thank you so much for your Kindness
Hugs your Friend
May the light Bless you always”
John
Imagine a scene at night as you lie on your 10 year old tattered cotton futon, laid on a solid steel bunk that gives not an inch. You lie there with your fever spiking, sweat drenching your sheets, nowhere to go on this endless night of misery. Your bunkmate is coughing, as is the guy a few feet away. Other men are moaning. The sounds of crying are muffled. The dorm lights have been off for hours but the exterior lights cast eerie shadows across restless bodies struggling for breath in a dormitory of death.