Voices From the Inside: The Year of COVID
By: Famm Foundation
Tags: Voices From The Inside, Covid 19, Famm, Prison, Criminal Justice Reform

Letter from one of the many prisoners incarcerated during the pandemic.

By Fernando Rivas

The following is a prisoner’s perspective of life in prison during COVID pandemic. Fernando Rivas is a federal prisoner serving his sentence in one of the hardest hit prisons in the county: Seagoville FCI. Early on in the pandemic, the number of COVID cases skyrocketed in just a matter of days with no way of escape for those confined there. Heading into the holiday season, it’s important to remember those who are alone without family and friends during this special time of year.

I would always be upset to hear my wife say on the phone: “You’re probably safer in there.” Safer? In prison? In this intolerable year of disease, contentious elections and widespread civil unrest, economic chaos and death, I can almost (almost!) agree with her. As terrible as things have been in 2020 there seems still to be no end to it, no extreme situation, no unprecedented event that isn’t sensational fodder for the 24-hour news cycle, from inmates digging graves in Texas for those killed by the virus, to political zealots burning ballot boxes in California or driving around in caravans with guns.

Here, in this institution in the spring we weathered the worst COVID outbreak in the BOP.

Nearly 1300 inmates were infected. Four died. Hundreds were denied compassionate release.

We have been in a lockdown since April and for a week or so there in June, following the national George Floyd protests against police violence, we were in a total blackout. The news from Minneapolis, Louisville, Atlanta, Kenosha, Seattle, Portland and D.C. flowed through our TV screens. We watched the social world outside unspool itself. In the fall we watched irate and insane political rallies, a crazed election, a president consumed by denial, a new administration stalled in the wings. We witnessed unbelievable death threats against state officials, dead rats left on their doorsteps, irrational conspiracy theories lurking in the shadows of a ‘deep state’. We watched dozens of tropical storms spiral into hurricanes and whip and smash into land wrecking lives and property. We saw celebrities and luminaries pass away, taking history with them, breaking our hearts and reminding us that life is short and fragile.

Those of us in prison are only a microcosm of American society, of the world, a small unwanted slice of the pie, the piece left on the plate. We are bit players in a grand drama. We’re the neglected, the forgotten, and the vilified.

As the vaccine for the deadly virus is distributed we fear we may be the last on the list of those immunized (although we are being told exactly otherwise). It’s understandable that people outside may resent prisoners getting the vaccine before other law-abiding citizens. We have been deemed losers, scum, not worth worrying about, not worth saving. And the irony is that being removed from the turmoil of the social world outside may be, as my wife has noted, a blessing, at least for the moment.

This situation, however, has made it obvious that our safety and wellbeing, shoddy though it may be, depends on the stability of the outside world. We notice the missing guards who have gotten sick and are on leave of absence, or those who have outright quit. We notice that our jailers are on edge. We feel the separation from our loved ones through suspended visitations. Most of us worry about our families out there losing their jobs, their homes, their health, making us wonder what we may be returning to after our sentences are complete. We are not contenders on the field, we are the sidelined — an inactive, passive audience to what is unfolding beyond our control, outside the walls, but vividly, too vividly playing on our television screens.

It’s almost too much to bear, one person dying from the virus every minute. Twenty-six hundred deaths in just one day. The statistics are staggering and mind-numbing. The crazed machinations of a defeated president seem like theater of the absurd when processed against the larger backdrop of the global disaster. Our own tragic isolation seems dwarfed and insignificant.

Am I safer?

Its voices like Fernando’s that inform FAMM’s work and keep us going. As lawmakers and policymakers make sense of the changing pandemic situation, we will do all we can to keep people in prison top of mind. Keep them safe or send them home.