As wildfires tore through huge swaths of Oregon last week, prisoners were hurried away from the encroaching flames -- not to freedom but to an overcrowded state prison, where they slept shoulder-to-shoulder in cots and, in some cases, on the floor. Food was in short supply, showers and toilets few, and
As wildfires tore through huge swaths of Oregon last week, prisoners were hurried away from the encroaching flames — not to freedom but to an overcrowded state prison, where they slept shoulder-to-shoulder in cots and, in some cases, on the floor. Food was in short supply, showers and toilets few, and fights broke out between rival gang members.
The quandary for prison officials, too, is complex, as they grapple with managing large facilities through simultaneous dangers. Before the fires started, the virus spread in America’s prisons partly because routine transfers of prisoners proceeded without testing them first for the coronavirus and isolating those infected.
“We’re all in dorm settings,” said Boswell, who was among more than 1,300 female prisoners moved to Deer Ridge Correctional Facility in Madras, Oregon. “Everyone is crammed in.” The fire ultimately did not reach the prisons — known as the California State Prison Solano and the California Medical Facility — but prisoners and their families grew increasingly anxious as the flames crept closer.
“Half of my life is him, and I have no control over what’s going to happen,” said Johnson, who lives a half-hour from the prison and has not been able to visit her husband since March because of virus restrictions. “I’m doing all these things on the outside, trying to bring him home sooner, but it’s just Russian roulette. There’s no control.”
Adnan Khan, who was previously incarcerated in California and now runs Re: Store Justice, a criminal justice reform organization, spent three years at the prison in Solano. As the fires were bearing down in the area last month, he said, he spoke with a friend at the prison over the phone. In California, some activists who had been lobbying for prison reform because of the pandemic, are now pushing for releases, or at least evacuations, because of the fires.
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