Inside The Prison Where 8 In 10 Of The Incarcerated Have Gotten Coronavirus
Above: Jonathan White with his family. Illustration: HuffPost; Photos: Family Handout/Getty Images
Jonathan White, a 45-year-old man incarcerated at a state prison in Ohio, gazed out at the group of people who had come to collect their lunch from the chow hall. As part of the effort to contain the spread of COVID-19, people were sent one dorm at a time to pick up their food. These individuals were from the dorm that houses many of the people who are elderly or have health conditions.
“My heart just ached cause I asked myself who am I seeing now that I won’t see again due to death from this virus,” White wrote in early April, just as the pandemic was building toward its first peak in the U.S.
“This prison is just too crowded, there is no way everyone will make it that I’m seeing unscathed,” White wrote. “Thanks to years of flopping people simply because they have the power to, never truly looking into who people are today,” he continued, referring to those he knew who had been denied parole. “This has resulted in their apparent overall objective which is to see to it that as many people as possible die in prison.”
Since White made that dire prediction, at least 13 people incarcerated at Marion Correctional Institution (MCI) have died, in addition to at least one prison staff member. More than 2,000 prisoners — about 80% of the population — have tested positive for the coronavirus, including White. The prison is the second-largest COVID-19 cluster in the country, according to the New York Times tracker, just ahead of Pickaway Correctional Institution, another Ohio state prison about an hour away. Nationwide, 9 of the top 10 coronavirus clusters are in prisons or jails.
There are signs this particular prison outbreak spread into the surrounding community: The relatively small county of Marion has one of the highest rates of infection in the state, even with the Marion prisoner cases removed from the count.
HuffPost spoke with eight...
