OFFICAL MISMANAGEMENT #2 "Covid-19 Outbreak @ C.I.F"
by- EL•BE•448 12.25.20
"If you tremble with indignation every time an injustice is committed in the world, we are comrades."
—Che Guevara
The number of covid-19 infections in general population @ Correctional Industrial Facility, in Pendleton, Indiana has immensely decreased since Nov. 13, 2020. However, prisoners were left to let the infections run their natural course. There was no real plan to more appropriately subdue the sickness when it arrived. Which was brought here through staff members.
VICTIM BLAMING
Victim blaming of prisoners has been the theme by CIF staff since the outbreak began. However, the blame has become more intense in the last couple weeks. Although, prisoners have been allowed out of their two-man cells throughout the day as long as there is social distancing. But guards, while wearing frontline gear of white coats, gloves, and clear shield masks, have been extremely petty with threats of lock downs; restrictions of microwave use, access to ice, and bathrooms (CIF cells don't have toilets or sinks in them), because one or two guys have to be reminded to pull their mask over their nose.
In many instants rogue guards use their shifts as a power game to hold these vital things over our heads. Which has been creating a hostile environment for both prisoner and staff. The prisoner, the victim of mismanagement, is being treated as the source of the pandemic. Historically, we have seen the extremes of what victim blaming can do (cf. Jim Crow, Nazi Germany, AIDS patients in the 80s, & poor peoples in general).
You Comrades on the outside must hold IDOC accountable to ensure that official mismanagement has not turned into a full blown concentration camp.
MORE CONTRADICTIONS
CIF prisoners receive cold sack lunch diets for every meal 6 days a week, except Wednesdays when a hot meal is provided. This a violation of IDOC policy that states that all inmates must get a hot meal every 3 days.
Another contradiction is the quarantined status the facility is under. While in the cell house prisoners are not allowed to be without a mask covering their faces or to gather at tables or in groups. However, in the last week prisoners in most cell houses were allowed to walk to the chow hall to pick up cold breakfast and lunch sacks and walk back; to gather in the chow hall and sit at tables together to eat hot meals on Wedesdays; and to go to the recreation building and yard together.
Why not lift the useless quarantine status in the cell houses when officials allow those other gathering?
Recently, all CIF prisoners got word on their GTL tablets that a vaccine would be available for IDOC within the first months of 2021. IDOC claimed that they would use the Moderna vaccine on prisoners. Here is the irony, besides the front liners, the elderly, and those with preexisting health issues, the next most vulnerable group to the virus outbreak are people held in prison. But the state of Indiana is planning to administer the vaccine to its prisoners last. This another inhumane measure against incarcerated citizen. Prisoner lives matter too.
All of these contradictions are of great concern.
OUTSIDE COMRADES
Please let CIF and IDOC officials know through your letters, phone calls, and email that you are monitoring their grave mismanagement of the covid-19 outbreaks throughout its 22 carceral facilities. As long as they know that y'all on the outside are holding them accountable, it will make them do better jobs at managing their facilities in ways to produce real rehabilitation.
Even more, his official mismanagement is further proof that elderly, sickly, non violent, over sentenced, and prisoners locked up for petty parole violations should be released immediately. Not only will this mass release SAVE tax payers money that can be better spent in blight communities, but it would SAVE lives as well.
In Solidarity,
#massreleasenow