Pandemic in Prison: When the Caged Bird Just Can’t Sing

When Covid-19 threatened to breach prison walls, the effort to repel it turned prison into a fortress of solitude to silence even a prolific writer — well, almost!

You may have noticed, or at least I hope you noticed, that we did not publish a post on our usual post day on December 30. I wrote one, and I even liked it which is somewhat rare for me. Because I must finish typing a post and mail it ten days in advance of its post date, I really struggled to finish it by the deadline. Due to restrictions of movement imposed by the pandemic, I could not bring it to the Library to purchase a copy of what I typed. So into the mail it went on the night of December 20. From there, it simply disappeared.

It was only mailed 200 miles away to New York, but it took 15 days to get there. So we published it on January 6, 2021 with the title, “A Year in the Grip of Earthly Powers.” The day it was finally published, as you know, was a hellish day in the U.S. as our politics erupted into violence in Washington, DC. I expected that no one would pay attention to that post at all given all that was happening, but it turned out to be one of our most read and shared posts of the year.

In a chapter in his great Divine Mercy book, Loved, Lost, Found, author Felix Carroll referred to me as “a prolific writer.” The chapter was not at all about me, however. It was about the powerful conversion story of Pornchai Moontri subtitled, “Mercy Inside Those Stone Walls.” Felix gave us permission to reprint it and I highly recommend both the chapter and the book.

To be called a prolific writer by a prolific writer made me a bit self-conscious. Felix is currently the Executive Director of Marian Helper magazine. He was twice awarded “Writer of the Year” by the New York Press Association and has received multiple awards from the Catholic Press Association. I, on the other hand, write blog posts on an old typewriter in a prison cell and use snail mail to get them published.

The only thing “prolific” about it is the amount of White-Out on the typed pages of the post before it goes into the mail for scanning. In a prison pandemic, even my supplies of White-Out, paper, and typing ribbons are not guaranteed commodities. The uncertainty of the future here conspires with the pandemic to create pandemonium.

It’s hard to believe that those two words — pandemic and pandemonium — are not at all related to each other. “Pandemic” comes from a combination of the Greek terms, “pan” and “demos” meaning, “across people.” “Pandemonium” comes from the Greek, “pan” and “daimon” which literally means “among demons.” It was first used in the Seventeenth Century epic poem, Paradise Lost by John Milton to describe the fallout from the Fall of Man.

In prison, however, these two words became interchangeable in the last year. Every passing day as the virus spreads brings an ever-tightening spiral of regulations designed to stop the inevitable. It was clear from the first signs of arrival of the virus in early 2020 that prisons would be especially hit hard without stringent precautions. So the first line of defense from prison officials was to curtail all physical contact with the outside world.

For nearly a year now, all prison visits with family and friends have been eliminated. All programs staffed by outside volunteers have been cancelled. Most religious gathering and programs came to a halt, and outside medical appointments and consults were curtailed. No one gets in, and no one gets out.

As much as prisoners and their families disliked these policies, I cannot deny that they were effective at keeping the virus at bay. For almost all of 2020, there was but a single case of a Covid infected prisoner who was kept isolated until he recovered. In that same time, eleven staff tested positive and were placed on leave. But as the year progressed, the number of staff exposed to the virus on the outside increased dramatically. First, all staff were required to wear masks at all times in our presence. By mid-summer, the mask requirement was imposed on prisoners as well. It began as a requirement to wear a mask at all work sites and medical visits. By September, it expanded to wearing a mask for whatever length of time prisoners leave their cells.

The Prison Unemployment Line

During the summer of 2020, many prisoner work sites were shut down leaving their prisoner-staffs idle. Both Pornchai Moontri and I were fortunate to have positions deemed “essential to prison operation.” Pornchai was the Safety Trainer in the Recreation Department training prisoners on the use of weight machines in the gym and woodworking machines in the Wood Shop. I was the Law Clerk in the prison Law Library which every U.S. prison is required to maintain.

I considered myself fortunate to have someplace to go beyond my cell for six hours a day. The job also gave me access to a photocopy machine so I could purchase a copy of my posts before they went into the mail for scanning. By later in the summer, even our jobs were cut to less than two hours per day as new rules for contact tracing were put in place. I was still required to wear a mask, but I was the sole person in the Law Library filling al requests sent through inter-office mail. No one else was allowed in.

Plexiglass barriers were built and installed to shield me from exposure on the day when we would all return to business as usual, but business as usual never returned. Then round two of the virus came in the fall, and with a vengeance. Absolute non-contact rules were adopted for the various prison units to stop the spread, but the virus had other plans. By November, dozens of staff were infected and placed on leave, and hundreds of prisoners were placed in quarantine. Some members of the New Hampshire National Guard were brought in to help staff the prison.

At the time Pornchai Moontri completed his sentence and left for ICE detention in September, bunks were being placed in unused dormitories and the gymnasium in case they were needed for medical quarantine. Over the next two months, one unit after another saw infected prisoners taken for isolation in an effort to control the contagion. The unit in which I live was unscathed and the last standing until early December. Then it came. One pod after another saw infected men taken away while the pods were then locked in for fourteen days of quarantine. By Christmas, eight of the twelve pods here were in quarantine status.

Going Viral Behind Prison Walls

The place where I live was still untouched until just hours ago. On Sunday morning (January 10) a prisoner in the cell next to mine was taken away for medical quarantine after testing positive. We then became the ninth pod here to be locked in for quarantine. Apparently the person taken was ill but tried to hide it. I am told that he will recover, but being in quarantine now severely limits my movements and possibly my ability to write for the next two weeks.

But the picture might be even worse than that. When someone on the pod next to us became ill, the entire pod was tested for Covid, and to our shock the entire pod — all 24 men — tested positive. It is likely to be no different here. For now, we are merely subjected to daily temperature checks. So far, no one has a spike in temperature. My daily temperature has been the same each day: 97.1 degrees. I am surprised to discover that I am one of the cool guys on the pod. Who would have known?

Ironically, just as this all occurred, I discovered that I am on a short list of prisoners considered most vulnerable to Covid and therefore scheduled to receive an early vaccine. Because I have an autoimmune disorder, it can cause what is known as a cytokine storm if I become infected. It is known to be far worse than the infection itself. So far, however, there is no sign of it.

I hope we will have a post next week. I hope I will not end in a Covid-infested dormitory. But if that happens, I just received a really great book sent to me by a friend. It is Volume One of the Prison Journal of George Cardinal Pell. If I am taken away I will take it with me, and it will give me lots to write about when I return.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Well, so far 2021 has not exactly been the age of enlightenment that some came to expect. It can only get better. Before that happens, for an understanding of the science, including political science, behind the pandemic, please see my post: “The Chinese Communist Party & the True Origin of Covid-19.”

You may also like the related links that appear in this post:

A Year in the Grip of Earthly Powers

Pornchai Moontri: Mercy Inside Those Stone Walls by Felix Carroll

The Prison Journal of George Cardinal Pell, Volume One

Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan in China’s central Hubei province

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