By Bryant Arroyo
From PHN Issue 55, Winter 2024
America! America!
Land of the free, a society filled with justice and equality.
This is a clear example of hypocrisy,
unless they forgot to include me,
and millions of others kept in captivity.
Confined behind tall walls and razor wires,
with the nation of prisoners constantly rising higher.
Countless amounts will never be released,
except in a body bag once deceased.
By T King
Coeffield Unit, Texas
April 2021
First, let me say Thank you so much, you guys are Awesome for what you do for us locked away.
I’m writing to get your take on an issue that happens more than it is talked about.
My name is T. King & I’m a lifer on the Coffield unit in Texas. The largest & one of the oldest joints in the Lone Star State. Being a maximum-security unit, movement is restricted, understandably, so you’re either locked in your cell or the day room & now during COVID-19 it’s 2 hours instead of 1 hour at a time. Sometimes you can get stuck in there 3-5 hours depending on if the count clears in time.
Continue reading “It Happens More Than It’s Talked About”By Daniel Ramirez
From PHN Issue 52, Spring 2023
Criminality begins with potential perpetrators dehumanizing potential victims in their own mind. Using words such as this person is a “monster” or an “animal” or even a “snake.” Not worth the ground he/she walks on. And so on… We put a negative spin on a person so we can have a reason to look down on them or treat them unfairly. Potential perpetrators use labels upon people whom they want to victimize and treat any way they want.
Continue reading “Dehumanizing of Persons Involves Words”By Marino Leyba
From PHN Issue 52, Sring 2023
Justice!
Just us!
Even when we are innocent they are always quick to try and bust us.
Turn up or turn out, truth out, the life we live I am not proud to talk about. Imagine being locked up and there is no way of walking out
I am barely walking now…
By Lily H-A
From PHN Issue 50, Summer/Fall 2022
On June 24, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-4 in the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization to overturn Roe v. Wade, stating that the U.S. Constitution does not protect the right to abortion. The new ruling does not restrict abortion on its own, but gives states the unlimited ability to restrict abortion.
Continue reading “Abortion Rights Update: ROE V. WADE OVERTURNED”By Ethan Macks
From PHN Issue 50, Summer/Fall 2022
Do you ever feel like you just don’t want to wake up and face the day? Do you feel unmotivated and restless? In small amounts, this is normal for most people, but if you find yourself experiencing this almost every day coupled with self-defeating thoughts and a feeling that overall things are just not worthwhile, you may be seeing the early signs of something I am all too familiar with. Depression is widespread in prison, and you may be thinking to yourself, “What is there to look forward to in the penitentiary?” Unfortunately, that is exactly the problem. Prison breeds emotions like anger, sadness, and despair. On top of all the negativity that goes on, there are countless reminders of what’s going on in the outside world. Some people handle these feelings better than others, but I believe that most of you who are reading this can relate. I feel that with the right tools, you can recognize a low mood and remedy this issue before you fall into a very dark place. An isolated mind is your own worst enemy.
Continue reading “The “BIG THREE” and Depression”By PHN Editors
From PHN Issue 50, Summer/Fall 2022
Activists in Pennsylvania have started a coalition to end the $5 copay for medical care in state prisons. The coalition includes FAMM, the Pennsylvania Prison Society, the Coalition to Abolish Death By Incarceration (CADBI), the Institutional Law Project, and Physicians for Criminal Justice Reform—and now Prison Health News has joined too. For those in prison in Pennsylvania, you can help! We need to show the DOC that the copays are truly a hardship for incarcerated people and their families. To do that, you can start using the grievance process when you are unable to afford a copay. The DOC tracks grievances, so seeing grievances over copays will help them understand how often people in prison can’t pay. If you’re not in Pennsylvania, you can do this too, but there is more power in numbers where there is a group of activists taking action together.
Continue reading “A Tool in the Struggle to End Medical Copays”By Lily H-A
From PHN Issue 50, Summer/Fall 2022
Omicron and BA.5
The current version of the coronavirus that is infecting the most people in the U.S. is called BA.5. This is a “sub-variant” of the omicron variant. It is the most contagious version of the virus yet, and it’s sometimes able to get past antibodies from prior infections and vaccination. However, these antibodies do still provide some protection from BA.5, especially against severe illness and death. BA.5 does not seem to cause more severe disease than other variants. Data are also beginning to suggest that long COVID may be somewhat less common for people after being infected with omicron sub-variants than with earlier variants.
Continue reading “COVID-19 Updates: JULY 2022”By Anonymous
June 16, 2022
It has been more than a year since the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections vaccinated its inmate population. Mask mandates have been lifted. The unvaccinated have been allowed off quarantine and spread throughout general population. And yet here we are, another year gone, and the pandemic restrictions limiting activity and quality of life within the prisons remain. The PADOC has successfully used a deadly pandemic as a smoke screen to institute many of the wide-ranging and destructive restrictions it’s wanted all along.
Many of us served as “essential” workers during the pandemic, tirelessly disinfecting the blocks, preparing food and distributing trays. We toiled for long hours to keep the prisons running, with the understanding that Covid was an unprecedented situation that required all of us to work together. Besides those few lucky enough to work, the majority of us were stuck confined in our cells for days and weeks and months on end. It was tough on all of us, but we made it through, and to show its appreciation for our cooperation the PADOC has chosen to keep its pandemic restrictions in place indefinitely.
Continue reading “An Open Letter to the Incarcerated of Pennsylvania”
Protesters in Philadelphia demand decarceration during the COVID-19 pandemic. Photo by Joe Piette, shared under Creative Commons https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/
by Yosef Robele
Editor’s note: With this thoroughly researched academic article, Prison Health News has the rare privilege of offering scientific data—in addition to our continuing testimonies from people in prison—about how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted incarcerated people. We agree with the author, Yosef Robele, that decarceration is the winning strategy we all must fight for.
Yosef is a 2nd year masters student in the Environmental Health Science & Policy Track at George Washington University School of Public Health. He was born and raised in Denver, Colorado. He went to undergrad at the University of Pennsylvania, where he majored in Environmental Science and minored in Physics. He hopes to have a career tackling environmental justice issues from a scientifically informed background.
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has done much to reveal structural inequalities in American society. Throughout the pandemic, the Prison Industrial Complex has been shown to be wholly inadequate in protecting incarcerated persons, prison staff and the surrounding communities. As both the incarcerated persons and the staffs have higher rates of chronic disease than the general population (Wildeman & Wang, 2017), this places them at higher risk of an adverse outcome from contracting COVID-19. While the prison population has actually decreased by about 10% for various reasons during the pandemic, (Franco-Paredes et al., 2021) prison reform advocates have called for more radical slashes. This paper will advocate not only for these radical slashes but also for other forms of support for formerly incarcerated people. Over summer 2020 alone, over 500,000 cases of COVID-19 can be attributed to the carceral state (Hooks & Sawyer, 2020). In order to prevent further cases and deaths, it’s imperative that incarcerated people are not only released but released with enough health care and housing to support themselves during the pandemic.
Continue reading “Prison Decarceration in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic “
Prison Health News 