* According to an update from the Wisconsin Department of Corrections provided to The Progressive after publication, there are 390 positive COVID-19 cases among the 21,365 prisoners held statewide, and WiDOC has provided all prisoners with three cloth masks (as opposed to the two reported by prisoners themselves).
Nicasio Quiles, who is incarcerated in the Prairie du Chien Correctional Institution in Wisconsin, says staff at his prison have resisted wearing masks to protect inmates from COVID-19.
“Excuses ranged from false concerns that ‘wearing masks will scare the prison population’ to ‘If prisoners don’t wear one, why should I?’ ” Quiles writes in an email to The Progressive. “Even though everyone knows that the only way COVID-19 enters a prison is because of staff.”
The ACLU of Wisconsin notes that, after four months of falling from the start of the pandemic, cases among the prison population has once again begun to rise.
Aaron Pavin, who is incarcerated in the Green Bay Correctional Institution, notes that the Wisconsin Department of Corrections has instructed guards to receive temperature checks before entering prisons, to wear masks or face shields inside, and to maintain social distancing. While he’s observed guards are wearing masks—and forcing prisoners to do the same when outside of their cells, using the four paper masks and two washable cloth masks issued to them—the same cannot be said for prison staff elsewhere in Wisconsin. From Oshkosh to Columbia to Fox Lake, inmates report guards refusing to wear masks and failing to socially distance.
People who are incarcerated across Wisconsin, and their advocates, accuse guards of failing to meet safety protocols and thereby risking spreading the virus to overcrowded, under-resourced prisons, where it will undoubtedly claim lives.
“There should be mandatory masks for everyone—workers and people in prison—as well as practicing social distancing,” the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee of Milwaukee, the local branch of an international labor union for inmates, says in an email to The Progressive. Organizers with IWOC-Milwaukee help connect 3,000 prisoners across thirty-one facilities in Wisconsin via email correspondence and newsletters.
Wisconsin is home to thirty-seven state prisons, which hold more than 23,000 inmates. Even prior to the pandemic, conditions at the state prisons were brutal, with inmates being driven to sue the Wisconsin Department of Corrections for lack of access to essentials like health-care and toilet paper.
In response to COVID-19, Wisconsin officials suspended all visits to state prisons on March 13, all work-release March 16, all transfers from county jails March 19, and all admissions on March 21—meaning that, by April, one of the only remaining vectors for transmitting the virus into the prisons, was the guards.
To date, there have been 395 positive coronavirus tests among the incarcerated population at seventeen prisons. There have also been 152 confirmed cases among staff at twenty-three sites.
Both Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers and the state’s prison agency have attempted to staunch the spread of COVID-19. The Wisconsin Department of Corrections began on April 7 issuing personal protective equipment to staff in prisons where the virus was confirmed and made mask-wearing mandatory on June 4. On August 1, Evers imposed an order for masks to be worn in enclosed public spaces statewide. Despite these directives, many inmates report that guards are refusing to comply. The deficiencies are apparent to visitors, too.
“Every correctional officer that I walked past leading up to the entrance of this facility did not have on a mask,” says Sean Wilson, a campaign manager with the ACLU of Wisconsin, of his experience picking up a friend from Oakhill Correctional Institution in Fitchburg, Wisconsin, in May. “You would think that this is something that they would be doing within a prison setting, where if this virus were to break out . . . it would spread like wildfire.”
Recognizing the imminent danger that COVID-19 presents to the lives of inmates, the ACLU of Wisconsin has been calling on Governor Evers to use his executive power to release inmates who are especially vulnerable, such as the elderly, and those with only one year remaining on their sentences.
IWOC-Milwaukee has similarly called for the release of all inmates over the age of fifty-five, as well as those with nonviolent convictions. Advocates stress the dual benefits of releasing inmates as allowing the freed to get out of harm’s way, while providing those still imprisoned with more room to socially distance. While Evers has released people held in county jails, advocates remain waiting on him for further action regarding state prisons.
And time is of the essence. The ACLU of Wisconsin notes that, after four months of falling from the start of the pandemic, cases among the prison population has once again begun to rise. The increase coincides with the spread of COVID-19 in rural Wisconsin, which makes for an especially dangerous situation.
“If COVID-19 is on the rise in rural Wisconsin, which is the location of most of our prisons,” says Wilson, “then that should communicate to state officials that we are not out of the woods and you should not forget about the incarcerated population—that you should be continuing to do everything in your power to release them.”
In a second email to The Progressive dated August 11, Pavin wrote:
“At [the Green Bay Correctional Institute], we are now on full lockdown. The virus, it is rumored, has hit the South Cell Hall, and it is unknown how many people, whether staff or inmates or both, have the virus. All inmates are locked in. No one is allowed out.”