The Federal Correctional Complex in Oakdale, La., is the site of the first fatal coronavirus outbreak in the federal prison system. F.C.C. Oakdale — which houses some 2,000 inmates and employs close to 500 staff members in two low-security prisons (Federal Correctional Institution Oakdale I and F.C.I. Oakdale II) as well as a minimum-security camp — provides the economic lifeblood for a town of fewer than 8,000 people and the surrounding parish. Many of F.C.C. Oakdale’s inmates are serving sentences for nonviolent offenses, like drug sales and financial fraud.
The Bureau of Prisons maintains that it began preparing for the coronavirus outbreak in January. On March 26, Attorney General William P. Barr advised Bureau of Prisons officials that certain “at-risk inmates who are nonviolent and pose a minimal likelihood of recidivism” might be released to serve out their sentences in home confinement, under terms included in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act.
On March 28, Patrick Jones, 49, who was serving a 27-year sentence at Oakdale for possession of crack cocaine with intent to distribute, became the first federal inmate in the country to die from the virus. On April 3, Barr ordered federal prison officials to speed the release of “vulnerable inmates” from at least three federal institutions fighting major coronavirus outbreaks, including F.C.C. Oakdale. By the third week of April, seven Oakdale inmates had died. At least 100 inmates and staff members had been infected, with more than 20 hospitalized, as confusion, fear and anger gripped the interconnected community of inmates, officials, workers, family members and loved ones.
Interviews have been condensed and edited for clarity. Several correctional officers requested anonymity for fear of retaliation.
Alice Jones, Patrick Jones’s mother: I talked to him in March — he always called me once a month — and I told him, “I love you, baby,” and he said, “I love you, Mama.” And that was the last time I talked to him. He was not sick. No sniffling, no coughing, nothing.
Correctional Officer 1: Me and another staff member took out an inmate to the hospital. We took him out on a Thursday [March 19]. We were told, “Oh, he has asthma.” It’s routine to take inmates that have health issues out on emergency medical trips. He said he was short of breath, couldn’t breathe. They gave him a mask. We weren’t offered any kind of protection.
Ronald Morris, correctional officer, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 1007: I got a phone call saying we had an inmate go out with Covid-19 symptoms. And yeah, they told the staff he had asthma, and I think it was even on the paperwork that he had asthma, but then they sent him out with a mask. So, hell, yeah, it was very disturbing that they sent the inmate out with a mask and didn’t provide it to staff.
Correctional Officer 1: We checked him into the emergency room, and about an hour and a half later, they moved him from a regular E.R. room to a negative-pressure room, and that’s when they had us put masks on, but I’d already been around him without a mask on. No one told us he might have Covid-19. They said, “Hey, he got asthma issues.” Two days later, I got a call telling me he’d tested positive for the virus.
Alice Jones: They lied. He did not have a longtime chronic illness. No asthma. He did 100 push-ups a day.
Christopher Walker, Patrick Jones’s son: I didn’t know about it until my grandmother called me at like 1 o’clock in the morning. I don’t see how it just took him down like that.
Claudette Crumpton, Patrick Jones’s former girlfriend: He was as healthy as a bull. I always heard in prison the doctors don’t properly take care of them. If they fill out a piece of paper saying they sick, they wait a couple of days to get permission to see the doctor. And then they wait until they get damn near to their deathbed.
Ronald Morris: We found out that Jones tested positive for Covid-19 on the 21st. That’s when we locked down both institutions. And we had our second confirmed case that day also. He went to the hospital. On the 22nd, both C.O.s who took Jones to the hospital were cleared to return to work.
Correctional Officer 1: I got a call telling me I was on administrative leave. And then seven hours later, roughly, a supervisor calls and says, “Y’all are good to come back to work.” I was upset. I mean, you already know you’re exposed to it, but you know, got to pay the bills.
Gene Paul, the Republican mayor of Oakdale: I knew about that first inmate who went to the hospital and tested positive, and I knew that a corrections officer had transported him without a mask. But I didn’t know that his wife and daughter work here at City Hall. When I come to work Monday morning [March 23], his wife tells me that her husband was that correctional officer. I was like, “What?!” I sent them home and said not to come back for 14 days.
On March 28, nine days after being admitted to the hospital, Patrick Jones was pronounced dead. The federal Bureau of Prisons claimed Jones had “long-term, pre-existing medical conditions which the C.D.C. lists as risk factors for developing more severe Covid-19 disease.”
Don Cain, inmate at F.C.I. Oakdale I, via email: I will tell you how I heard the virus got in. I was told that a staff member from education bragged about going to New York City. The first death of an inmate was a guy who was in contact with that staff member. I heard that staff member was supposedly in critical condition in the hospital on a ventilator.
Wife of an F.C.C. Oakdale correctional officer, via Facebook Messenger: There’s also a rumor saying an inmate came off the bus as a new intake, and he brought it in.
Mayor Paul: As of last week [the week of March 30], they were still bringing inmates in from other facilities. It took them about a week to stop those buses. There was a lot of the ball being passed around with, “It’s not my responsibility, it’s the marshals’ responsibility, it’s not our responsibility, it’s somebody else’s.” Well, whose responsibility is it to stop this? I mean, I love the B.O.P. being here and everything, but you think you would have taken some precaution 10 or 14 days earlier to be halfway ready for this thing, especially when you got about 2,000 inmates and about 500 employees.
Correctional Officer 2: I know there was a conversation with the warden. It was myself and one of the case managers that I used to work with — who tested positive, by the way, he’s been out for a week, week and a half — he questioned the warden and said, “What do you think about this coronavirus, do you think we’re going to have a problem?” And he said: “Oh, no, because we live in the South, and it’s warm here. We won’t have any problems.” That was his exact words. Nobody gave us new direction on what we should be doing, how we should be preparing, what to look for, anything.
Ronald Morris: We tried to talk to the warden about safety protocols. I’d say as early as March 18 we talked to him about cross-contamination among the staff. We suggested we keep staff contained and not let them work between institutions. But the warden said he didn’t think that was needed at this time.
Oakdale prison officials including the warden, Rod Myers, did not respond to multiple detailed requests for comment.
Kirk Brannan, recently released from Oakdale prison camp: What happens is that the correction officers and administrators come and go between the facilities and between us and the civilian population. So if any one of them gets exposed, then they’re going to expose us.
Ronald Morris: I’d brought up in our daily meetings that the staff going on medical trips needed P.P.E. But it took them several days to issue N95s, so at first they wore surgical masks. Then the guys did have N95s, but we had not been properly trained to make sure we are doing this properly. And at times there have been shifts they would go work without being protected at all. On March 25, we had six inmates in the hospital for Covid. Each inmate requires two staff to watch him per eight-hour shift. On March 26, we had three confirmed staff with Covid-19.
Mayor Paul: We’re a close-knit community — everyone knows everyone, so there is a lot of concern and uncertainty. About 50 percent of the people in the surrounding area work at the prison, and the ones that live in Oakdale, they go to work, and then they go home and back into the community, go to stores, that kind of thing. When that first inmate tested positive, I called the warden, but he hadn’t returned my calls. Now I have people calling in asking me questions about what’s going on, and I couldn’t really tell them anything because I didn’t know anything. People just want to hear something. Just like, “Everything’s going to be OK,” or, “I spoke with the warden, and he said they’re working on this and everything’s going to be OK.” But I didn’t really have that information. So I called up my state representative, and he was getting calls about some of the same things, and the warden had never returned his call either. And then he called our U.S. congressman, Mike Johnson’s office, and Senator Bill Cassidy.
Ronald Morris: Our warden said he was writing the playbook. I cannot tell you how many times I heard the phrase that we were “writing the playbook” for the B.O.P. to handle this kind of thing when it reached other facilities. I mean, if we were writing the playbook, we were in a ditch.
Mandatory daily temperature checks of every inmate began on March 26. To house sick inmates, prison officials converted half a housing unit in Oakdale I to quarantine inmates who had been exposed to the coronavirus or were exhibiting symptoms.
Don Cain, via email: A guy they brought over to our pod had a cough. I had no symptoms whatsoever, and neither did the other four guys in my pod, but they told us to pack up, we were going to quarantine. I for sure thought I was next to die, as I have diabetes, and they say that having diabetes, it’s the one that is the hardest to fight the virus. I just knew they were going to stick me in there with someone who was sick, and I would contract it and would not be able to fight it and pass away. I was praying, asking God not to let them take me over there to that death unit.
Correctional Officer 3: We got three inmates getting tested to see if they had the virus, and we put them on a range, which is a straight hall that got cells. I fed those guys. I wore gloves. I didn’t wear masks. I didn’t think they had it. But turns out all three of them tested positive. And they went out to hospitals. It was just a wake-up call for me.
Correctional Officer 1: It took a little while to wrap your head around that it is a big deal. Then probably Thursday [March 26], I went to sit on one inmate at one of the local hospitals, and they gave us the little yellow paper gowns to put over our uniforms, and the N95 masks and gloves and goggles. But the nursing staff were coming in like they were about to take a spacewalk — the helmets, you know?
Ronald Morris: We had inmates at four local hospitals. At the hospital 40 miles away, they have a suit they wear with the helmet. Our staff don’t. I think half of a whole floor is negative pressure. At another hospital, we got patients in a regular I.C.U., and we sit outside a glass partition so we can observe the patient. They also have some inmates in regular rooms, and the staff are sitting in the room with them. Those are not negative pressure. At one hospital, staff had N95s, gloves and gowns. The health care workers have on the same thing. There are two negative-pressure rooms, and you sit in a vestibule and observe the inmate through the glass wall. The inmate is restrained to the bed, so if something happens to the inmate, we got to go in and remove restraints.
On March 27, five plaintiffs, including three employees at F.C.C. Oakdale, filed a class-action suit on behalf of all federal employees claiming that since Jan. 27, they had “performed work with or in close proximity to objects, surfaces and/or individuals infected with the novel coronavirus,” and asking for hazard pay.
Anita Kadrovich, correctional officer: For probably over a year and a half or so, my job was to take inmates to their medical appointments. I have rheumatoid arthritis; it’s an autoimmune disease. So I do low-dose chemo every week, which wipes out my ability to fight off anything. I have no immune system. My doctor told me I should not be around any of it. He sent me a letter. But I didn’t turn the letter in. I didn’t want to leave my people stranded — it’s like leaving a man behind.
Ronald Morris: Jones died on the 28th, and by then, we probably had up to about 12 inmates in the hospital, and another confirmed staff with Covid. On the 29th, we had seven confirmed staff. Then it just hit the accelerator, and it went fast. You had inmates going to the hospital by ambulance, two or three a day. I was pleading with the warden for help — we just didn’t have enough staff. And we were forcing staff to work 30 or 40 hours straight.
Kirk Brannan: At the camp, there’s two large dorms filled with bunk beds stacked end to end, three feet apart widthwise. So when you’re sleeping on your bunk bed, you’re within three feet of 12 people snoring and breathing hard. So there’s a lot of common breaths going on in there. It’s the epitome of an environment that can spread the virus if any one person gets it.
Ronald Morris: On March 30, we had 15 inmates in the hospital with Covid. We had seven positive staff and 16 staff out awaiting tests. On the 31st, we had 17 inmates in the hospital and eight staff positive, with a lot of people awaiting results. Then the second inmate died on April 1, and by then we was running. First we had 10 positive staff. At noon that day, we had 13 positive staff. By 5 o’clock that evening, we had 17 positive staff. It was very chaotic and stressful. Most of the guys that tested positive were either working in the housing units or sitting on Covid-19 patients in the hospital. In the housing units, they were only wearing surgical masks. They say if you work in an isolation unit, you must wear an N95, but where do you think these inmates are coming from? They’re coming from a housing unit where they won’t give you that mask. That’s our biggest bitch. How is it that you don’t wear the N95 mask where the symptoms originate from? If an inmate gets sick in this area and lives in that area, you don’t wear a mask, but if you put him in an isolation area, you wear a mask.
On March 31, the Bureau of Prisons ordered a 14-day lockdown across the federal prison system: “Inmates in every institution will be secured in their assigned cells/quarters to decrease the spread of the virus.” The lockdown permitted inmates in small groups to use the phones, computers, showers, commissary and laundry facilities.
Kirk Brannan: They have the camp inmates making sack meals, bag meals, for those who are on lockdown. They’re going on three and a half weeks of living on bologna sandwiches and peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches. That’s all they get to eat for dinner or lunch. They get a little packet of cereal for breakfast. Inmates at the camp are making those bags, and we don’t know if anybody infected is making those bags or not. They’re not testing. You would think if you have a potential of having an infection, you’d have to be tested before you get to handle people’s food. Well, that’s not being done.
Ronald Morris: We have, as of about an hour ago [on April 2], 20 staff who’ve tested positive for the virus. We probably got that many out at home waiting on test results. And that changes hourly. We have approximately 18 inmates in the hospital. We got approximately 40 or so inmates in isolation; these inmates are showing symptoms of Covid-19. We got over 80 inmates quarantined that have been exposed. Both of those numbers are growing daily. I am in the community hospital working, and I’m looking at the inmate through glass in the bed. He’s sleeping. I hope he doesn’t die on my shift.
On April 2, an inmate at the minimum-security prison camp who was exhibiting symptoms was tested for Covid-19. Anita Kadrovich had been transferred to work at the camp a few days earlier.
Anita Kadrovich: We thought we were fairly safe out here, but no. When the first inmate got sick, people started looking around and started getting worried. You could just tell on their faces. Everybody was like: Oh, my gosh, it’s here. I felt the same way. When they came out to quarantine the first inmate, they had their hats on, they had their N95s on, they had the surgical mask over their N95. They had the gowns on, they had their feet covered, everything.
Correctional Officer 2: That same day, I asked the acting health-services administrator for an N95 mask, and she told me I didn’t need one. At the same time, she and all three of the nurses that were with her had on full protective gear. But I was told the surgical mask that had been provided was good enough. And that wasn’t the first time that we here at the camp had been denied. We’d requested masks two other times and were told, “You don’t need it.” They never gave us a reason other than, “Well, until there’s a positive case,” and now they tell us they aren’t testing because they assume if someone has symptoms, they have it.
Anita Kadrovich: And right after the first inmate was taken to quarantine, they called for safety to come out and decontaminate the health-service department. The safety guy told me that when he walked into the health-service department without his mask on, they were like: “No, no, put your mask on! That inmate was all around and in here!” So I’m like: “It was that serious for y’all, what about all of us? He was in our offices cleaning our doorknobs. Do we need to be decontaminated?” But they didn’t tell us any of that.
Correctional Officer 2: That inmate was one of our orderlies, so he was walking around without a mask every hour cleaning every door handle in the entire camp. He’d exhibited symptoms the previous week. He’d had a fever. And we requested the protective equipment, but they wouldn’t give it to us because they said we didn’t need it. They had a little dust mask, like a painter’s mask, and a pair of gloves that they would give us, but it’s nothing.
Anita Kadrovich: I feel like we’re guinea pigs.
Kirk Brannan: Everything they’ve done has been really kind of the opposite of what they should have done. I can’t tell you how many guys, when I was leaving, came up to me and said: “Please get our story out there.” Something’s got to happen before something catastrophic happens.
Ronald Morris: You got the director of the B.O.P. saying they’ve been preparing since January, and they have a national stockpile of supplies. Well, where the hell are those supplies? Why can’t we get some? They did send us some national-stockpile N95 masks. Want to know how many? Two hundred! Two hundred! They couldn’t afford to give us any more. They know that we’re just the first institution that’s going to be dealing with this, so they need to hold it to ration it out to other institutions because they know their national stockpile is insufficient to begin with.
Heidi Burakiewicz, lead attorney on the federal class-action lawsuit: What I am constantly hearing from workers at Oakdale is that they’re looking for guidance, and they’re getting no guidance or contradictory guidance, or it’s constantly changing. I’m outraged when I hear people tell me: “I rode in a van with a sick inmate, and I asked for a mask, and they said: No, I didn’t need it.” Or: “I sat in a room in the hospital with a sick inmate, and I didn’t even have a mask on.” Or: “It was only a surgical mask.” That makes me angry. That was preventable. Somebody in this agency needs to take responsibility and start protecting these people.
Ronald Morris, via text, April 3: Five inmate deaths. Eighteen inmates in hospital, 727 inmates quarantined in five housing units. Two staff in hospital.
Don Cain, via email: A guy from our unit passed away. I did speak with him on a daily basis, so that hit home to actually know someone who was alive just last week and he is no longer here.
Correctional Officer 3: Inmates get sick with the coronavirus, and they don’t want to say anything until it’s so bad that we got to rush them out on the ambulance so they don’t die. We had one guy, he was about to die, and his cellmate waves over the corrections officer, and he was like: “Hey, uh, this guy’s not doing so well.” And then they had to put him on oxygen and rush him out to the hospital. He just laid in his bed, and he didn’t want to go to another unit, and he didn’t want to go to the hospital. All the inmates are scared because they don’t know what’s going to happen if they get it.
Don Cain, via email: People are scared and worried. They ask questions and complain, but we are told half-truths, kept in the dark.
Ronald Morris: We’ve had staff working 24 to 32 and 40 hours of overtime. You don’t have nobody to come relieve you sitting at the hospital, and inmates is going out left and right. We’re 50 minutes from the institution, so you got at least an hour’s drive. I had an officer that got to work at 6 that morning and volunteered to work at the hospital to relieve a staff member so they could go home. Ended at midnight and never got relieved, drove back to the institution because he had another shift to pull there and fell asleep three times on the highway. We cannot abandon the hospital post that we’re on or abandon the security that we’re providing for that inmate because we’ll face disciplinary action. We all take an oath to protect the public, to protect the institution, to protect each other and government property. We have a no-strike clause in our union contract. We’re bound by an oath kind of like the military to protect and serve.
Correctional Officer 2: Originally, they gave us a form, and it asked if you’d been exposed, if you had any symptoms, if you had seasonal allergies, how long you had seasonal allergies. Now all they’re doing is checking our temperature. You pull up, they put a little forehead thermometer and check your temperature: “OK, you want a mask and gloves? Go on in.” No “How are you feeling? Do you have body aches, are you nauseated? Do you have a cough, a runny nose, any of that?” We’re not questioned at all.
Anita Kadrovich: At 99 degrees, they clear you to come in. So you could have symptoms, and you could have been undetected.
Ronald Morris: If they let everybody self-quarantine, there ain’t nobody to work in the prison, and the bureau is not going to do that. So they’re going to make the excuse of “We’re doing enhanced screening to catch it, come back to work.” That’s their answer. Is it the right answer? Hell, no, it’s not the right answer. But what is the right answer? You know, where do you get the help from? I had to pressure the warden to ask for temporary-duty staff to come and assist us. Our national union was telling us that they had people in the regional office ready to assist us, and I asked him if he knew about it, and he said no, and he said: “I don’t know if we need them.” And I said: ‘‘We need help! We can’t keep going at this pace. Will you ask for help?’’ I had to ask him two or three times. They started showing up late March.
Mayor Paul: I spoke with the warden on Saturday [April 4], and I mean, this guy sounded like he was fixing to explode. You could hear it in his voice, I mean, exhaustion. I feel sorry for him. He just said it’s been such chaos out there for the last couple of weeks.
Correctional Officer 3: I’m not one of the people stuck working in the medical unit. If I was, I’d be worried every day. We’ve had staff members get sick because of having to work at the hospital for so long.
Since the outbreak began, a number of correctional officers who believe they were exposed to the virus say they have requested extra sick leave to self-quarantine but have been denied. Those who have taken time off anyway risk being designated “absent without leave” by their supervisors.
Correctional Officer 2: A memo is done saying a staff member was placed on AWOL because of “abuse of sick leave.” And that’s what they consider it. If you miss more than three days, you have to have a doctor’s note. And then when they place you on AWOL, the memo goes to the warden, and well, this warden, he refers every single case for disciplinary. The common thing is you get like three days without pay, if you abuse sick leave, and then it just climbs from there. I think one staff member spent 10 days without pay for abuse of sick leave.
Anita Kadrovich: A woman I know, she’s a single mom, and they mandatoried her to go work where all the quarantined inmates are. She broke down and cried because she just thought that was her death sentence. She has two girls, and she was like: “I just know I’m going to get it.” But she went. She sucked it up because that’s what we do. Can’t cry in prison. It’s harder for us women than it is as men, because we’ve got to show that we can do the same job they can do. And it’s mostly a man’s world inside the prison, so as women we have to suck it up and do everything just like the men do. And crying is not an option.
Jordan Cain, Don Cain’s daughter: We live in Wyoming, and, you know, we don’t know anything about Oakdale or anything like that. I know my dad, I feel like he’s scared. He hasn’t called me today [April 3]. So I’m a little worried already ’cause that was kind of one of his things, like, to make sure he calls us every day so we know he’s safe. He did have a heart attack last year. I mean, I am a little nervous right now.
Ronald Morris, via text, April 5: Twenty inmates placed among four local hospitals. Seven inmates in I.C.U. Four on ventilator. Twenty-one staff positive.
Kirk Brannan: The most important thing to me right now is to try to help some of these other guys get out. And I think the tools are in place to do that, if people who can exercise the tools will do so. I think the issue is the B.O.P. is a big bureaucracy. And like any typical bureaucracy, when something comes up that has to be done, it just takes some time to get it done. And because of that, they’re ignoring the severity of the emergency. The first guy left about five days before me; he had filed a petition for compassionate release a year ago. He’s 72 years old, has some health issues. I’m 66.
Don Cain, via email: Do you know anything about the CARES Act? I know I should qualify for what I hear are the standards.
Anita Kadrovich: They have let a few out on compassionate release. So a lot of the older inmates — the majority of our campers are older, and they all have medical issues — they are panicking. They’re doing anything they can to get their paperwork in to do compassionate releases, and case managers are getting overwhelmed with all the paperwork coming in for that. Families call and ask if we can pay for them to be furloughed or in a hotel room or let them come home, and I have to say it’s not my decision.
On April 6, the inmate at the prison camp who was tested for Covid-19 received a positive test result. The following day, a second camp inmate reported Covid-19-related symptoms and was placed in isolation.
Ronald Morris, via email, April 7: The camp is now on quarantine. The warden allowed cross-contamination to affect the camp staff and inmates.
Correctional Officer 2: Right now I’m looking at the front of the unit. And we have a piece of paper on the door where everybody goes in, and it says: “This unit is quarantined. Proper P.P.E. is required.” But all these inmates, they’re all in their dorms. They’re cleaning the floors, cleaning the bathrooms and the showers and pretty much doing their normal routines. I mean, they’re still in the dorm within arm’s length away from each other. On quarantine.
Don Cain, via email: We have no gloves. Only orderlies get gloves, and they wipe down phones and computers once a day, not after every use.
Anita Kadrovich: The community is scared to death of people who work out here. I don’t take it to heart when they turn around in the aisle at Walmart because I have my uniform on and kind of run the other way. I just grab a few things and be gone. I got pulled over for speeding, and the cop found out where I worked at. He backed away from my car and said: “Have a good day!” Southern people, we want to hug everybody. I am a hugger. But no, not now.
Correctional Officer 3: I mean, I completely understand where they’re coming from, but I have never had people like — they’re scared of us. They don’t want to get infected. I try not to go anywhere after work until I change clothes. I just get home, strip, dump everything in a wash and wash it a few times, because I don’t know what I came in contact with.
Wife of C.O.: It is very scary. We have to relive, every day, being scared that my husband has contracted this virus and that he might not be showing any symptoms. We are trying to be very cautious when he comes home. He literally strips down on our back patio, sprays his clothes, shoes, even work bag and hat down daily with Lysol before coming in the house through our sitting area in our bedroom to thoroughly shower. Then he tries to distance himself from us. But it’s so difficult trying to explain to a 2- and 3-year-old that they can’t hug or sit with Daddy.
Ronald Morris, via text, April 8: All of F.C.I. I is in quarantine. And now the prison camp is in quarantine. Forty-five positive inmates in both places. Fifty-three inmates in isolation. Three on ventilators. Six in I.C.U. Twenty-two staff positive. I lost count of staff awaiting results.
Wife of C.O.: My husband is trying to find an urgent care or doctor that will test him. He has a few symptoms but isn’t running a fever, therefore no one will test him. We’ve called several urgent cares and several doctor’s offices, no luck. The E.R. said they changed criteria today to qualify for testing. So we are hoping to be able to get him tested today. He has a cough, and he can’t smell. He said he’s feeling kind of off.
Anita Kadrovich: I should get my test results later today. I have a few symptoms, but it could be my rheumatoid arthritis, because I’ve been off my medicine because it drops my immune system. So to try to build my immune system up so I can continue to work without worrying about catching it. I just quit taking my medicine.
Don Cain, via email: There is still scared people and tension in the air, and you can feel the frustration of being kept inside without going outside except to get your meal. There is a lot of bickering at each other, sense of hostility toward each other like something is going to explode.
On April 8, a violent clash between inmates and correctional officers at Oakdale I occurred after the officers tried to reintegrate a group of prisoners from the isolation unit into the general population.
Ronald Morris: The administration screwed up. These inmates were over the Covid-19 virus, but they weren’t supposed to be released back out there yet, and so when they realized this, they went back an hour and a half later and grabbed ’em and put them back in the isolation unit. And when they did that, that freaked those inmates out because they’re scared of getting this [expletive], and they thought they’d just released the virus into that unit and contaminated them. The problem was, they didn’t educate the inmates on what’s going on. It’s basic corrections 101, communicating with the inmate population. Go down there and town hall them and educate them. They didn’t do that — they kicked ’em out and then jerked them back up, and you think, Oh, hell, they just brought an infected person down here, and now we’re all going to get this [expletive].
Don Cain, via email: I know one thing is, if I do pass, my family has one heck of a suit.
On April 17, a Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman responded to a detailed request for comment with a statement: “We want to point out that following a recent visit to F.C.C. Oakdale, the C.D.C. and the Louisiana Office of Public Health commended F.C.C. Oakdale staff and confirmed their compliance with current C.D.C. guidance for Covid management in correctional facilities. We direct you to our public website for detailed information about how the B.O.P. is taking aggressive steps to mitigate the spread of Covid in all of our facilities, including F.C.C. Oakdale.”
Ronald Morris, via text, April 10: Another inmate death — six. Positive inmates: 49. Positive staff: 26.
Correctional Officer 1: You don’t know. This could be the day that you have a temperature. Or this is going to be the day that you come in contact with somebody that’s going to get you sick. Every day when I come home kind of starts my 14 days over, where I can’t have contact with my family. It’s weighing on my wife, and it’s weighing on me. I’m starting to become a little withdrawn and short. I know that my stress rubs on to her and then rubs off to the kids. And it’s not just us. I’m sure it’s the health care providers, I’m sure it’s the local parish and state law enforcement, federal law enforcement, firefighters. I mean, we all probably feel the exact same way. We have no choice.
Mayor Paul: We don’t have a morgue at the Oakdale hospital. They have run in a portable morgue. It’s an 18-wheeler on the loading dock. I understand it is for all the surrounding hospitals if needed.
Correctional Officer 2: We’re still releasing inmates if it’s time for them to be released. When they’re going to leave here, they’re going to get on a Greyhound bus, probably change two or three different buses. One’s going, let’s say, to Houston, one is going to Georgia; we send inmates all over the United States. We send inmates to Puerto Rico. We send inmates everywhere. I have brought up that if we know that they’re getting out, then why are we not putting them in quarantine? Because an inmate could not have a fever 12 hours before he leaves, get on a plane or a bus, and as soon as he gets home, he tests positive. Well, then he’s contaminated all those people.
Ronald Morris: On Monday [April 13], the U.S. Marshals showed up with two what they said were “recovered” Covid-19 inmates and said we had to take ’em. So they’re quarantined. And I was very upset — my next question was: “Are we going to be the Covid-19 hub around here?” And they were like: “No, no, this is supposed to be a one-time deal.” But we’ll see.
On April 15, a seventh inmate died. Twenty inmates were hospitalized. Fifty-six inmates had tested positive for Covid-19. Thirty-two staff members had tested positive, along with three of their family members.
Correctional Officer 2: We just want to be protected. That’s all. My husband works here. And we have three children. I have elderly parents, his mother’s elderly. We don’t want to give this to anybody. And it’s terrifying whenever we hear, you know, somebody else has it, somebody else has it. We live here. This is where we’re from. This is our home.
Janet Reitman is an investigative journalist and a contributing writer for the magazine. She is currently working on a book about the impact of extremism on American culture and politics over the past 30 years.
