COVID prison Archives - Street Spirit

COVID prison

Inside the struggle to depopulate San Quentin

By Joe Garcia on February 11, 2021

In light of a botched transfer last year, federal judge ordered San Quentin State Prison to decrease its population. Here's a look inside San Quentin as officials begin to do so by transferring incarcerated men to other prisons—rather than releasing them.

We were locked in our rooms due to COVID-19

By Gary Child on September 1, 2020

First-person Opinion

We were locked in our rooms due to COVID-19 but allowed to use the restroom with, at times, 10 to 15 inmates. We line up for meds four times a day at least 10 to 20 deep. If you ask the correctional officer (CO) to wear gloves, they’ll refuse your meds.

Large-scale decarceration is the only way to halt COVID outbreaks in prison

By Stop San Quentin Outbreak Coalition on July 17, 2020

Commentary News Opinion

Releasing a mere 6 percent of the people inside California’s overcrowded prisons falls woefully short of the large-scale decarceration needed to protect the health and safety of the community.

Incarcerated insights into isolation

By Joe Garcia on August 1, 2020

Commentary Features Opinion

To those of you going stir crazy while struggling to shelter-in-place and self-isolate, please try and focus on the positive aspects of this new reality. It’s important to find your own beacon of light to pull yourself through the worst of the chaos. Decades of incarceration have taught me this and ingrained in me the coping skills to get through any seemingly depressing situation.

I am incarcerated at San Quentin. I have COVID-19.

By Thanh Tran on July 17, 2020

First-person Opinion

I write this after 3 days of being curled into a fetal position, fighting off COVID-19. I was sick and bedridden when I received my test results that read, "COVID Negative." This is what it looks like to test someone and then try to transfer them.

Right side of history

By Steve Brooks on July 17, 2020

Commentary First-person Opinion

When future generations look back on the devastation caused by this coronavirus pandemic, they are likely going to say that what happened to incarcerated populations in America’s prisons is tantamount to crimes against humanity.