No Way Out: Covid Behind Bars
WFAA-TV
12/13/20
The Texas prison system is one of the largest in the world. When COVID-19 hit in early 2020, it was clear that if not handled properly, the pandemic could devastate not only the nearly 150,000 prisoners and 37,000 staff inside the walls, but could also seed the deadly virus in communities throughout the state.
A joint investigation by WFAA-TV in Dallas and The Marshall Project, the nation’s leading nonprofit news organization covering of U.S. prisons and jails, found the Texas Department of Criminal Justice was woefully unprepared for what lay ahead.
By the start of October, the infection rate within the system was 490 percent higher than Texas as a whole, and the death rate was more than twice the national average.
Our special report “No Way Out: Covid Behind Bars,” tells the story of how and why that happened.
It’s the product of a six-month investigation, which was based on more than 100 interviews with staff, prisoners and their family members; reams of policy documents, internal reports, leaked emails, hundreds of letters from prisoners; and a handful of images and recordings from inside prison units captured on contraband cell phones.
The novel coronavirus took the world by surprise, but we found systematic failures by Texas prison officials persisted for months into the pandemic.
Specifically, we discovered:
Prison employees reported being forced to share and reuse protective gear well into the fall of 2020, despite the fact that officials said they had enough equipment on hand before the outbreaks began.
The agency did not consistently isolate infected prisoners, or quarantine people long enough – even after the executive director was warned their procedures might be inadequate.
At some units, prisoners said that instead of getting medical treatment, they were put in solitary confinement and given over-the-counter medication. Others said that staff ignored requests for help, including those from men who later died.
Even though the prison system locked down dozens of facilities to control outbreaks, officials undermined containment efforts by transferring prisoners while they were sick and forcing staff to fill in at infected units hours away.
Staffing vacancies soared as hundreds of workers caught the virus or quit out of concern for their own safety. At some particularly understaffed units, cell phone video showed that prisoners began starting fires several times a day to get attention when they said they weren't fed or allowed to call home.
We also learned that families of correctional officers who died from the virus were denied benefits from the state of Texas.
These failures resulted in Texas prisons having more COVID-19 cases than any other state prison system in the country and nearly as many as the sprawling federal system. As of mid-December, at least 168 Texas prisoners and 26 prison employees have died from the virus.
In addition to our half-hour broadcast special, our “No Way Out” investigation features a rich and robust digital presentation (see supplemental documentation for links), featuring a series of letters from prisoners who caught COVID-19 and suffered through appalling conditions as they watched their cellmates and friends dying around them. Each of the six featured letters is read by a former Texas prisoner. We also have a long-form narrative to complement our TV special, and an exhaustive interactive timeline tracking the spread of the disease and how the agency acted – or failed to act – accordingly. Additionally, the project includes brief obituaries for all of the prisoners and staff who died, as well as a separate investigation using contraband cell phone footage to document a rash of fires prisoners set in order to bring attention to their worsening living conditions. Although prisoners have intermittently used these blazes to force responses from prison officials for years, this is the first time journalists have been able to prove that it’s happening – and that it’s happening frequently amid the pandemic, in part because most Texas prisons do not have working fire alarms.
LINK to content online
LINK to see the full investigation, plus sidebars
Submitted by Jason Trahan.