COVID-19 is biological warfare against prisoners

March 3, 2022

One in every five state and federal prisoners in the United States has tested positive for the coronavirus, a rate more than four times as high as the general population – 1,700 loved ones have died. In some states, more than half of prisoners have been infected, according to data collected by The Associated Press and The Marshall Project. Stop experimenting and start releasing!

Part 2 of Herd Immunity

by Cheryl Vaughn, California Institute for Women (CIW)

Editor’s note: We continue with our JPay correspondence from Cheryl Vaughn, W93852, who sounds like an activist, but is a woman sharing her grave concerns about the plight of women prisoners being treated inhumanely at CIW – same as many of us might do sitting around our kitchen tables sharing our thoughts on the state of the world – feeling she has little to no agency over her ability to change her circumstances, other than having hope, saying prayers and risking retaliation for exposing current prison conditions at CIW to the public.

Jan. 5, 2022 (excerpt)

We are in Phase 1 again. Deja Vu. They seem dead set on not letting people go.

Then they got the nerve to speak harshly: “Go to your cells! Close your doors!” Then you hear a woman’s voice loudly over their radio snippy and shouting harshly: “No inmates are to be showering or using phones, they don’t get to be out!!” They love locking us down, yelling, talking down to us like we’re bad dogs or something. 

Those compaction moves were bound to contribute to this current environment of Covid positives. How utterly cruel, murderous even. They would rather watch us die or suffer, than let people go or do any of the right, moral and ethically sound things humans do if they have a responsibility over the lives of others. 

With power comes responsibility. But this treatment is utterly criminal – no better than what many of us are accused of doing or have done. In some ways it’s worse, because it’s genocide.

Here’s the coldest part of it – the warden is a woman of color. A Black woman! How could she?!

Jan. 8, 2022

Dear Nube Brown, 

I hope this letter finds you all doing well, staying safe out there. We here at CIW are trying to maintain our mental and physical health. 

We were issued one N95 mask each about three days ago. However, we are expected to wear them when we come out of our cells per one of the housing lieutenants. But we were wondering, how often should we get a new one? Generally, officers have them, but rarely do we ever get them unless we are on a transport out of the prison. If we are going to be on this statewide 15-day quarantine, shouldn’t we get one a day, at least, of the N95 mask?

snippy and shouting harshly: “No inmates are to be showering or using phones, they don’t get to be out!!”

Aside from the quarantine we are already on because we have positives in our housing unit here in Emmons A and Emmons B, the staff is not telling us who is or isn’t positive; something they never should have been doing in the first place because it was causing people added stress and shame for everyone to know they were specifically on quarantine with the sign on their cell doors, and everyone would blame them because the quarantines would cut short the programming time of everyone in the unit. 

Another thing I question is, should the porters (inmate workers) be the ones controlling the bleach, holding on to it, not allowing other inmates access to it themselves, etc.? We have one very, very bossy inmate worker who wants to tell others what to do so badly, policing other inmates especially since they pick on certain ones and overlook their buddies.

Inmate workers are out of their cells while the rest of the population is locked down. They began to address other inmates in a superior tone and tell the COs how they want to run things. The staff are so short that they are allowing this behavior because they need the help, I guess. 

It’s very bad policy – inmates should never be put in a position to police other inmates. Morally speaking, they should not even want to, but apparently the incarcerated workers don’t recognize the damage of allowing themselves to be used by the system like this. They don’t get all the PPE gear that staff does, so why even be used like that? 

Sincerely, Inmate Cheryl Vaughn  W93852

Jan. 14, 2022

Hi, Nube. It’s me, Cheryl, from CIW.

Food insecurity is becoming a feature of prison now, and it doesn’t seem to be letting up any time soon. The pandemic has a lot to do with this.

Schools are facing this same problem. But why should CDCR take funding from schools and other vital services just to keep prisons open and prison guards employed? Certainly, if schools are facing food shortages because of supply-chain crises, then the chains that supply prisons should be supplying the public schools instead.

It’s very bad policy – inmates should never be put in a position to police other inmates.

However, if that happens, prisoners will come up short. It then becomes unjust detention when captors cannot supply inmates with the proper amounts of nutritional, at least somewhat palatable, food to sustain each person on a daily basis. We are already beginning to see food insecurities here in CIW.

We really need to start on a true campaign of vigorous prison closures in California. Too much money is being taken from other needy programs for prisons. The detention in California is already reaching a level where it has become unjust detention. 

Covid is continually scourging inmates and staff. We drink unsafe water. Our dilapidated buildings and plumbing are fit for demolition; These old buildings are full of asbestos. We receive substandard medical care, there’s overcrowding of inmates and we’re too close together – then we get another surge of positive Covid cases. 

The huge shortages of staff are due to the pandemic. These unsafe conditions abound in California prisons. Conditions were already bad for prisoners, and sometimes even staff, but mostly since Covid, they are unbearable. 

Critical times, hard to deal with, heading toward tribulations – the cycles of abuse seem never ending with no sign of letup. There is no more possibility of reform – the California prison system is broken beyond any hopes of repair.

Truthfully, the people should close all except the very few highest-level prisons for serial killers and rapists and child molesters – although even a few people in some of those categories may possibly be reformed – but the California prison system itself is way out of control and beyond reform.

The Department of Agriculture pledged in the week of Dec. 17, 2021, to send up to $1.5 billion to states and school districts to help fortify the nation’s school-meal program. The funds, which the USDA says it hopes to make available in January of 2022, are intended to help schools deal with disruptions brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. The bulk of the funds is expected to flow to as many as 100,000 schools in all 50 states.

Last time that I checked, no other state’s prison guards are as well funded as California’s.

Sounds nice, but how many times has the bulk of funding allocated for public programs, even schools, ended up in police coffers and prison personnel pockets instead? Besides, the funding the police organizations hijack isn’t going toward the inmates, but for salaries, raises, medical care and dental coverage, and so many other perks and benefits for prison employees and their families.

The nepotism in hiring for some of these prisons in California is so blatant and rampant that several generations of one family can be employed in one prison alone. A lot of that happens right here at CIW. Perhaps there are rules against this practice, but no one seems to be enforcing those rules.

Funding also goes for more employee vehicles and weapons to use against inmates. Not even New York’s correctional peace officers union have it as well as the California Correctional Peace Officers Association. Last time that I checked, no other state’s prison guards are as well funded as California’s.

This comes at the cost of taking money that should be for firefighters, teachers, medical personnel in public hospitals – not just jail or prison infirmaries, where it’s well-known that medical care for incarcerated people is substandard, and medical personnel in carceral institutions usually lack proper credentials and training for treating inmate-patients.

These monies should also be for homeless shelters and senior centers and animal shelters, the improvement of public-school grounds and equipment and more after-school programs, etc. [These monies should be for] the community – really put funds into the hands of the community instead of criminalizing almost everyone in the community besides a select few. 

The inhumane treatment of incarcerated people is not considered criminal, but protesting such treatment is criminalized.

Please stop the school to prison pipeline which is set to churn out more slaves for the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) – brainwashing men, women, children, everyone, into believing we are all chattel once we are incarcerated.

The PIC is also having us believe that speaking out against being treated as such makes us rebels, outlaws and criminals. Oh, People, stop funding this diabolical system.

Now, here’s the cold part, where it gets tricky: The inhumane treatment of incarcerated people is not considered criminal, but protesting such treatment is criminalized. Framing trouble by decree like the 13th Amendment did and still does to this day, hundreds of years later, after the Civil War, there’s a modern-day slave class – prisoners.

Sincerely, Cheryl Vaughn

Jan. 16, 2022

Hi Nube, it’s me Cheryl from CIW. Today is Sunday Jan. 16, 2022.

My e-mails of course are all monitored closely as my regular snail mail is. 

I do worry that as a result, I can expect retaliation, though. But I know that’s going to happen anyway as soon as this state quarantine is over – I have been hearing rumblings of, “Oh yeah, come February” from a CO.

Officials may transfer me to some worse prison or put me in a cell with some bully or known thief. An officer has already “jokingly” threatened me to do something like that. He is the same one that keeps clapping his hands in my presence talking about, “come February.” I guess that’s when we are expected to get out of quarantine. The staff have also said things that let me know they have been reading my mail, so it’s too late for me to clam-up now.

 As I write this, I was just told I am getting a bunky again, one who came from off the bus. Double-celled again. They are filling us up again right now. It’s so bogus how staff on second and third watch shifts make the safety COVID announcements daily about social distancing, then turn around and place us with bunkies like there’s a revolving door to each cell.

Also, I dared to question the reasoning behind CIW – or any prison in California – having the same person as warden, or even acting warden, who was the warden at CIM who allowed the transfer of 122 inmates from CIM (California Institute for Men) to San Quentin on May 30, 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

a real surge in positive Covid cases throughout the prison – why would the warden do such a careless thing at this time? 

Right now, some of the same officials responsible are working here at CIW, despite so many deaths caused by their carelessness. What’s worse is, during this Omicron variant, this ex-CIM official who now works here at CIW, has made many compaction moves double bunking almost all of us once again, even though doing so may be a violation of the treatment of prisoners under the United Nations’ Standard Minimum Rules for Treatment of Prisoners (the Nelson Mandela rules), and the standards defined by the American Correctional Association (ACA). The cells are tinier than the bathrooms in most homes.

The compaction moves here at CIW have caused so much stress and mental anguish. The main thing to happen since these moves has been a real surge in positive Covid cases throughout the prison. Why would the warden do such a careless thing at this time? 

Is this part of some scheme to test out the power of the vaccinations against COVID or what?! We were already secretly used as Guinea pigs by officials during the initial outbreak of COVID-19 in prisons throughout the U.S., in an attempt to establish herd immunity during the Trump administration. Crimes against humanity is what it looks like from where I sit.

I don’t know what’s up their sleeves, but I can only imagine. Naturally, being a lifer who has never gone to Board, even after 22 years of incarceration, I am sure I can expect to pay dearly for expressing myself at Board. 

At one point, people of color who were going to the Board were being asked if they were going to have any dealings with the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement. I cannot recall verbatim how the questions were posed, but the fact that it was even brought up during a Board hearing was intimidating. That was the way one young woman took it. I was not there in the room, so I have not seen the actual transcripts to know exactly what was said.

Fortunately, one of the people who this happened to has paroled. So, thank you Nube, by all means publish. Thank you for listening to my cries of anguish.

Sincerely, Cheryl Vaughn W93852

Jan. 26, 2022 (excerpt)

The governor is looking the other way, but these wardens must be doing this at the request of some higher official. You may find this same weirdness is happening all across the U.S., with wardens intentionally exposing inmates to this deadly virus to establish herd immunity. But in the process, they have sacrificed the lives of inmates and staff.

No one gave INFORMED CONSENT to be used this way. We are not just acceptable casualties. This affects the public, not just prisoners. 

It reminds me of the Tuskegee Experiments: Black male prisoners were exposed to a venereal disease. Sure, some may have contracted it naturally, but prison staff let those men go untreated to record how the disease progressed on each “subject.” Some of the men may have died, but all really suffered needlessly, and were injured in mind and body, some permanently. 

So, Covid is being used as a weapon against prisoners; I think it is like biological warfare.

Whatever those in power claim as the reason why they are allowing or even facilitating these outbreaks doesn’t matter, the results are weapons against a particular group of people – genocidal behavior of authorities against inmates, people who cannot fend for themselves.

Send our sister some love and light: Cheryl Vaughn, W93852, CIW, Emmons 403-L, 16756 Chino-Corona Rd., Corona, CA 92880.

Editor’s note: Cheryl Vaughn, like all those that speak out, are at risk of retaliation and other forms of intimidation to keep them silent or in fear. We can provide some protection and support by taking time to write to our imprisoned writers, and calling the governor with your concerns: 916-445-2841. 

Our community members behind the walls should not feel alone, hopeless or separate from the struggles we face out here. Let’s stand in solidarity with our community members behind the walls in our commitment to assert our humanity and fight for what’s right. 

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