‘Don’t want to die in here’: Kansas prison inmates months from release fear COVID-19
Matthew was scheduled to get out in four months.
After serving five and a half years in prison for marijuana charges, he has earned a spot in a minimum security work release facility in Wichita that allows him to leave for a job, for church and for certain errands.
When he gets out, he plans to live with his mother in Johnson County.
But now he, along with every other inmate in the facility, is in quarantine because one of them tested positive for the new coronavirus. Many fear they’ll be infected before they gain their freedom.
Four inmates at the Wichita Work Release Facility and multiple family members told The Star that Kansas prison officials have failed to act quickly enough to stop the contagion.
The Kansas Department of Corrections disputed some of their claims, adding that a Kansas Department of Health and Environment official is working with the prisons full-time on their response.
According to the DOC website, the Wichita Work Release Facility is designed to prepare a select group of inmates for release close to the end of their sentences.
The agency announced Sunday that an inmate at the facility tested positive. That man, along with 113 inmates who lived on the same floor as him, were transferred to the prison at Lansing, which has had the state prison system’s biggest outbreak of the coronavirus. The Lansing Correctional Facility reported at least 36 staff members and 29 inmates have tested positive as of Thursday.
At Lansing the inmates were moved to a specific quarantine area within the facility.
A group of Kansas inmates sued state corrections officials last week, arguing the response to COVID-19 in the prisons constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. The suit was sent to Leavenworth County Court on Tuesday.
Inmates remaining in Wichita now fear that they will also be sent away. Matthew and other inmates said the most logical solution is to send them home.
“(DOC) set us up for failure keeping us in this facility with the virus going around,” Matthew said. “I’m terrified that I’m going to contract coronavirus in here with less than 120 days to go.”
Fearing retaliation, Matthew and other inmates asked to be identified by first name only.
‘They don’t have room’
Since early on, Matthew said, inmates were concerned about what the response to COVID-19 in the Department of Corrections would be.
Starting March 6 a hand-washing station was placed outside the facility, prison officials said. Later in March, four-man tables were reduced to two-man tables in the dining hall and inmates started going through the meal line in small groups, DOC spokeswoman Rebecca Witte said in an email to The Star.
On March 24, Witte said, the facility began taking the temperature of everyone who entered the facility and on April 4 all movement was banned for inmates who did not work for essential businesses.
But inmates who spoke to The Star said those measures were not effective and they did not feel it was possible to practice social distancing where they were being housed.
The thermometer used to screen inmates as they came in and out of the facility, two inmates said, regularly registered temperatures lower than the normal human body temperature.
Jordan, an inmate scheduled for release in six months who asked to be identified by first name only, said the low readings could have been caused by officers holding the thermometer too far away from a person’s body.
Futhermore, he said, the guards doing the screening did not change gloves between inmates.
The hand-washing station, inmates said, was “hit and miss.” The pipes sometimes were frozen or soap might be unavailable.
Witte, the DOC spokeswoman, said the thermometer was “in proper, working order and has been since we received it.”
She hand sanitizer is used between each inmate and that guards are trained to use the thermometer. If soap or water was not available, the DOC spokeswoman said, hand sanitizer is provided at the entrance.
Up until Sunday when the positive case was found, Jordan said, inmates did not have masks. Guards wore masks sporadically. Multiple inmates would be together in the same rooms and it was difficult to move anywhere without coming close to guards or other inmates.
“They’re trying to separate people the best they can but they don’t have room,” Jordan said.
“For years, correctional facilities across the country have been tasked with housing a lot of people in a small amount of space. No, it is not possible to maintain the recommended six feet of social distancing at all times,” Witte said. “We have been making changes where we are able.”
Dana Hogan, the mother of an inmate who was moved to Lansing, said that her son had a private room in Wichita and seldom left it once the pandemic began to spread and the restaurant he worked at closed. She said he felt that as soon as he walked out of his cubicle he was exposed.
When the facility moved unemployed inmates to the first floor and employed inmates to the second, she said, her son lost that privacy. She said he heard the inmate who tested positive coughing days before he was isolated and tested.
The inmate did not register a fever or report symptoms while he was still in the facility community, Witte said.
As recently as Saturday, inmates said, large numbers of inmates were gathered in the same room to eat. They have no paper towels in communal restrooms and were sharing communal jugs and utensils in meal lines until they switched to sack lunches in their rooms this week.
When they were told about the positive case on Sunday, inmates said, more than 100 were pulled together into the same room for hours.
The Department of Corrections spokeswoman said that common areas are sanitized four times a day she could not confirm whether the inmates were gathered together for the announcement over the weekend.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance on handling COVID-19 in correctional facilities says that social distancing should be enforced as much as possible by limiting the number of people in spaces so they can remain 6 feet apart at all times.
Nicole Rogers, chair of the Public Health Sciences department at Wichita State University, said that in high density populations extra care needs to be taken to avoid the spread of the virus, however she said, this is a new situation and everyone is learning as they go.
The facility, she said has taken some of the right steps by providing masks and increasing separation since there was a positive test.
“Nobody does anything until we have a positive,” she said. “Maybe they should have (followed the lead of nursing homes) but I don’t know that they could do anything earlier,” she said.
Guards and inmates, she said, should wear masks at all times if they can’t stay six feet apart. However, the CDC did not begin recommending masks until recently. It’s good, she said that the facility is regularly cleaning high-touch areas, but inmates should be washing their hands every time they enter and leave such an area.
The best solution, she said, would be to relegate inmates to their rooms as much as possible but that step would have been viewed as extreme a month ago.
“I think that would be beneficial to the inmates to be separated like that and not have community time unless it’s outside,” she said.
‘Viable release plan’
The inmates said they are afraid of what will happen to them in the pandemic.
They still live in close quarters. Half the residents in the facility were moved to what inmates called the “epicenter” of the virus at Lansing. And their relatives have not heard from them since.
Jordan, who is scheduled to be released in six months, said he worries about whether he’ll be able to get home to his wife and 11-year-old son. He said he doesn’t have faith that he would be taken care of in prison if he is infected.
“If there’s a civilian and a prisoner and one ventilator who are they going to give it to,” he said. “I don’t want to die in here.”
Now, those inmates and their families are asking Gov. Laura Kelly and the DOC to let them go home or at least give them more information.
Hogan, the mother of one inmate, said she had sped up preparations for her son to come home, believing the pandemic would bring a quicker release. Instead, her 21-year-old daughter sobbed on the phone, convinced she’d never hear from her brother again.
Christie Rollings, another inmate’s wife, says she worries about her husband and the others who were moved from a situation in Wichita, with lots of freedom, to one in Lansing, with almost none, at the drop of a hat.
“I couldn’t imagine being in their spot and not wanting to completely give up,” she said. “I feel like they’re being treated like second-rate citizens.”
Inmates in the Wichita facility who talked to The Star said they felt like they were some of the easiest inmates to release because of their position in work release.
“Why am I even here if we’re all reintegrating into society already?” Jordan asked.
Earlier this month, a group of attorneys sent a letter to the Kansas Department of Corrections and Kelly making nine recommendations, including that inmates within six months of completing their sentences be released.
In statements Tuesday, spokespeople for Gov. Kelly and the DOC said they are “reviewing options” for early release, specifically looking at people already close to scheduled release times. The statements said that the presence of a “viable release plan” will be an important factor.
In the meantime, the Wichita inmates and their families said they are losing faith that the state will act.
