Wayne Colson Sr. recalls feeling “helpless” with his son sitting in jail as news of the COVID-19 pandemic was breaking. A loyal father, Colson had visited his son every Sunday. “I didn’t want him to feel like nobody was there,” he says in an interview. “I was never too busy to show him love.”
Jails have become petri dishes for COVID-19. The majority of people in jail have not been convicted of a crime, yet they are being exposed to the coronavirus.
Visitations at the jail were cancelled when COVID-19 hit. Worried his son would catch this deadly, invisible disease, Colson felt he was in a “whirlwind.”
Colson and his son live in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, a Midwestern college metropolitan area two hours south of Chicago. Many Black youth, like Colson’s son, have little prospect of attending the state’s flagship campus, the University of Illinois, and get funneled into the criminal legal system.
Jails have become petri dishes for COVID-19. The majority of people in jail have not been convicted of a crime, yet they are being exposed to the coronavirus. Those who cycle in and out of jails are also taking COVID-19 back into their homes, infecting Black, brown, and poor white communities.
There are almost 2.3 million people incarcerated in the United States, the majority in state and federal prisons where people serve sentences of one year or longer, and turnover is slow. Yet in county jails where people serve short stints, there are more than ten million admittances every year, making it even more important to contain the spread of COVID-19 there. President-elect Joe Biden’s plan for the pandemic includes no mention of jails or prisons. Even in the face of a global pandemic, the United States remains deeply wedded to mass incarceration.
In communities like Champaign-Urbana, and across Illinois, people are organizing against mass incarceration in their hometowns. This article is a case study of jails in three communities in Illinois―Champaign-Urbana, Bloomington-Normal, and Peoria. These were the only places in downstate Illinois that voted for Biden in the 2020 presidential election. They provide examples of struggles that must be waged all over the country if mass incarceration is to be reversed.
Early in the pandemic, court officials in Champaign County took measures to lower the jail population from around 180 people to about 140. I spoke to Captain Karee Voges, who oversees the jail and she described the steps taken to contain the virus: When an arrestee comes into the jail, they are screened and placed in quarantine for fourteen days, then they are put into the general population.
To members of the Champaign County Bailout Coalition, formed two years ago, these efforts did not go far enough. In April, the coalition sent a letter demanding local officials “drastically” reduce the jail population.
In late May, following the police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota, protesters gathered at the local shopping mall in Champaign where some broke windows and took items from stores. Police arrested and jailed twenty-six of them. Only ten of those could afford bail. The coalition paid approximately $46,000 in bonds to release the remaining sixteen protesters.
“We’re in the middle of a pandemic, and jails are recognized hotspots for coronavirus,” coalition member Chibundo Egwuatu said in a press release. “Nothing is gained by locking people up for taking action against police violence.”
Activists were correct in recognizing the threat. According to public records, just days earlier, on May 27, the first person at the jail tested positive for COVID-19. They were in a holding cell with four other people who later also tested positive. Two of them were released before the tests came back, returning home to expose their families and friends.
“If there was somebody who had COVID-19,” she says, “we all would have got it.”
I spoke with one of those arrested, Shantee Mason-Tanzie, who said she was put in a holding cell with twelve other women. “If there was somebody who had COVID-19,” she says, “we all would have got it.”
Currently, the jail population has returned to pre-COVID-19 levels. “If I could have it my way,” Voges says, “I wish we had less people being arrested.”
In nearby McLean County, fifty miles to the west of Champaign-Urbana, the jail is in Bloomington-Normal, another college community, which is home to Illinois State University. The jail is run by Sheriff Jon Sandage, a Trump supporter. Early on, Sheriff Sandage implemented a strict twenty-three-hour lockdown policy, but still could not keep COVID out of the jail.
In late July, Sheriff Sandage announced that a man who had been waiting for several months to be transferred to the custody of the Illinois Department of Corrections had tested positive for COVID-19. He placed blame on Democratic Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker for halting all prison intakes.
“There is just a whole lot of things that the governor I don’t think took into consideration when he forced this down the throats of local sheriffs,” Sandage told one media outlet. The sheriff failed to return calls seeking his perspective.
In March, the jail population dropped to 130 people, but it’s now back up to around 230. Approximately 53 percent of those currently in jail are Black. More than 90 percent have not been convicted.
Zachary Gittrich, a member of a solidarity research group who runs his own website where he publishes information about the jail, faults the sheriff for exposing the jail population to the virus. It was not the man awaiting transfer to a state prison, he pointed out, but jail staff who brought COVID-19 into the jail. The sheriff’s lockdown was not the solution, Gittrich says, “I think the better method is to decarcerate.”
Another forty miles west of Bloomington-Normal on Interstate Highway 74 lies Peoria, a working-class city built on the banks of the Illinois River. Many factories and warehouses along the river now sit empty. In 2016, Peoria was ranked the worst place in the United States to live for Black people.
Chama St. Louis has been a community organizer for seventeen years and is currently running for mayor of Peoria. She explained how Peoria is sharply segregated, with the majority of the 28,000 African Americans living on the city’s south side.
Peoria County Sheriff Brian Asbell is a Republican, but a reformer who won endorsement from St. Louis during the last election cycle. COVID-19 reached the Peoria County jail in mid-July, the sheriff announced. After several rounds of mass testing, the outbreak was under control, but only after a total of thirty-eight cases among incarcerated people were found.
St. Louis says she has received calls from families concerned about their loved ones in the jail. She’s also been in touch with the sheriff, who has maintained he is doing everything to keep people safe. While Sheriff Asbell set a good example, she says, “Overall, police need to be reformed and defunded.”
Despite the dangers of a global pandemic, communities have still been unable to disinvest from jail as a solution to social problems.
Despite the dangers of a global pandemic, communities have still been unable to disinvest from jail as a solution to social problems. As early reforms meant to mitigate COVID-19 are being abandoned, a report by the Prison Policy Initiative notes, the number of cases in both cities and towns has been the “most dramatic in economic areas with highly concentrated prison and jail populations.”
Matthew McLoughlin, Director of Programs for the Chicago Community Bond Fund, which has worked in coordination with several of the previously mentioned local movements, puts it succinctly. “County officials know how to prevent COVID deaths in jails,” he says. “The question is whether or not they want to.”