On Wednesday, April 15, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction announced that a total of three inmates have died at the Pickaway Correctional Institution in Orient, Ohio. The first inmate died over the weekend and tested positive posthumously. The other two are presumed positive for COVID-19.
This comes after the death of a staff member at Marion Correctional Institution last week and 293 inmates and staff testing positive statewide as of Tuesday, April 14. Specifically in Franklin County, two inmates at the Franklin County Corrections Center II have tested positive for the coronavirus, and over 20 staff and inmates have tested positive at the Franklin Medical Center.
Advocacy groups across the state say this is just a glimpse of what could happen in Ohio’s prisons. Among the common points — facilities are already overpopulated, and like in nursing homes and on cruise ships, prisons are closed spaces that can spread the coronavirus quickly without extensive action taken.
The ACLU of Ohio, in particular, has laid out categories of inmates that should be considered for release. They recommend populations such as individuals over 60, people with troubling health conditions, people who are incarcerated for technical reasons and those with low-level felonies as groups worthy of consideration.
Governor Mike DeWine has taken some of those categories into consideration when suggesting prisoners for release, though also ruling out individuals who do not meet stringent criteria: individuals who had been previously incarcerated, interstate offenders, individuals with active warrants or detainers in other states, and people who had committed serious prison violations within the last five years.
The governor’s commutation powers were also used to determine inmate release. Individuals who are 60 years of age and older and have a chronic health condition were under consideration, but individuals were also ruled out for not meeting the stringent criteria.
In addition to 23 women who are either pregnant or who recently gave birth and 15 people over 60 years of age who are within 120 days of release, that amounted to 205 people who were simply recommended for release. Whether those individuals are selected for release is up to a parole board.
Dkéama Alexis of the Black Queer & Intersectional Collective and #FreeThemAll614 — the Columbus affiliate for the national advocacy network in support of incarcerated individuals and other people in government custody — is in agreement with the ACLU’s suggestions on what individuals to release. However, the group goes beyond that, as their name might suggest.
A 1,152-signature petition was delivered to Franklin County Judges Ted Barrows, Stephen McIntosh, Kim Browne and Elizabeth Gill citing five demands of local officials: send all people home, with the immediate release of the elderly, pregnant people and people with health conditions; halt new admissions; drop fines and fees; end criminalization actions such as court-ordered classes and remote surveillance operations; and keep people inside safe by making hygiene products available for free, among other measures.
“We didn’t want to limit our demands to just people considered ‘medically vulnerable’ because all people inside are at risk for contracting COVID-19,” they said. “Jails and prisons are often overcrowded sites of squalor and trauma without the imminent threat of global pandemic, so we wanted our demands to encapsulate all those who have been victimized by the violence of imprisonment.”
“Incarceration is a public health crisis in and of itself,” they said.
A key group the governor has ruled out are people convicted of serious charges, including sex offenses, homicide and related offenses, kidnapping, ethnic intimidation, terrorism or domestic violence. He’s said repeatedly that these people will never be released.
On a local level, officials at the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office say they began taking precautions in early March, including the reduction of the jail population by over 500 inmates charged with non-violent and low-level offenses, reports 10TV.
“The criteria being used in Franklin County and statewide for release are insufficient and cruel given the severity of the danger,” said Maryam Abidi of #FreeThemAll614. “Local and state governments are responding incrementally when what we need is broad, sweeping release.”
All means all, says #FreeThemAll614.
“As abolitionists, we dream of and work towards a world in which we don’t cage human beings. This vision includes reducing the scope of surveillance and policing, as well as re-imagining ways that we address violence in our communities,” said Alexis. “We understand that people will continue to harm other people during the global pandemic, but we don’t believe that leaving someone in an environment where they can contract a potentially fatal virus is the way to rehabilitate someone.”
Instead, Alexis says, the focus should be on ensuring the safety of survivors and communities vulnerable to violence, “Especially when it’s more common for survivors of violence to be criminalized instead of their perpetrators.”
The sheriff’s office has noted a number of cleanliness and medical precautions that have taken place inside facilities, including disinfecting common areas and increasing inmate testing.
Abidi says as the group is actively building relationships and looking for ways to support the people inside these facilities and their loved ones, they’ve heard different reports on what’s happening inside.
“We’ve heard reports via social media from people at Jackson Pike in tanks alongside COVID-positive individuals who have received no additional resources, and we are reaching out to those individuals,” said Abidi.
Outside of the general public health crisis facing the prison population is the dual issues of racial disparities in prisons and health outcomes that culminate due to the pandemic. Local and state officials, acknowledging the racial health disparities seen in other cities, have highlighted their concerns. But outside of acquiring patient data, there is still the question of what can be done and what recommendations can be made.
With their demands, #FreeThemAll614 looks to address this further.
“There are long histories of our communities having the worst health outcomes due to medical apartheid,” said Alexis. “Since people of color and poor people make up the majority of those who are being held under captivity, large numbers of our incarcerated community members will be made into collateral damage.”
Abidi points out that local prosecutors and judges have uplifted the reduction in jail population, and Governor DeWine has said that the state is looking at more inmates for potential release.
What advocates statewide agree on is that what has been done so far is not enough.
“Social distancing is near impossible behind bars, and more people will continue to needlessly get sick if our local judges don’t release as many people as possible,” said Alexis.
Keep up with regular news updates regarding Columbus and Ohio’s response to COVID-19 here.
For more information on COVID-19 in Ohio, visit coronavirus.ohio.gov or call 1-833-4-ASK-ODH.