Liz Lozano has been incarcerated since 1995. Having spent over 20 years on the Central California Girls’s Facility, the most important girls’s jail on this planet, she’s a giant believer within the significance of psychological well being for rehabilitation. She additionally is aware of what works for her. Along with speaking to a therapist as soon as a month, she jogs within the yard at any time when she will. She additionally likes to backyard. “Being out in nature helps me floor myself and discover peace,” she stated over the cellphone, her voice calm and measured. “However I can’t backyard anymore due to fixed lockdowns.”
When the pandemic hit in 2020, well being specialists shortly raised the alarm concerning the distinctive dangers the virus would pose for each the bodily and psychological well being of incarcerated individuals. Lots of these fears got here to fruition — and analysis and interviews recommend that the prolonged lockdowns launched within the wake of the pandemic proceed to take a toll on prisoners’ psychological well being and well-being.
In STAT’s interviews with greater than a half-dozen girls who’re incarcerated in California, many described the post-pandemic period as their most troublesome interval of incarceration. Each single lady additionally stated that these lockdowns haven’t let up within the three years for the reason that pandemic began.
“It’s a standing joke that we will’t go 48 hours with out some type of main disaster that locks us down,” stated Cecilia Fraher, who was incarcerated at Central California Girls’s Facility (CCWF) and is now within the California Establishment for Girls (CIW) in Chino, California. “These crises don’t have anything to do with the inmates.”
It’s well-documented that long-term lockdowns can enhance anxiousness and disordered pondering, in addition to heighten the chance of suicide or untimely dying due to the bodily results of stress. The Worldwide Journal of Prisoner Well being additionally not too long ago printed one of many first items of qualitative analysis that examines the psychological well being results of pandemic-era lockdowns on incarcerated populations.
In interviews with 10 incarcerated girls in California, contributors described being locked in a room with wherever from one different individual to 6 to eight different individuals for 23 hours a day or extra, for weeks at a time. Total, the examine claims, the prolonged lockdowns disrupted the sources that assist individuals in jail really feel linked to their communities and aggravated the stressors they already expertise. Many contributors interviewed within the examine knew somebody inside who died by suicide through the peak of the pandemic. “They’re utterly trapped. And I feel that’s going to create a number of trauma,” one doctor who labored with incarcerated girls instructed the examine’s authors.
Girls at each CIW and CCWF declare that they’re nonetheless experiencing lockdowns as much as 4 instances per week. In contrast, they are saying, lockdowns have been uncommon earlier than the pandemic. “We went from nearly no lockdowns to day by day lockdowns,” stated Fraher. At CIW, the place the suicide fee was eight instances the nationwide common as of 2016, Fraher remembers getting locked down, pre-pandemic, at any time when there was a dying within the jail. She additionally remembers one lockdown as a consequence of excessive winds again in 2015. Apart from that, she stated, this was not a routine protocol.
The California Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) stated in a press release that on the establishments it oversees, “it could grow to be mandatory to switch programming for a number of causes to make sure security and safety.” It stated that CIW and CCWF haven’t been below lockdown, outlined as proscribing “any and all motion in an recognized space, facility, or whole jail,” versus modified packages, which “can nonetheless permit the inhabitants to bathe, work, and obtain medicine, relying on the standing of their housing unit.”
“Prisons, for higher or worse, are a part of our social security web,” stated Jennifer James, an assistant professor on the UCSF Institute for Well being & Getting old and one of many authors of the examine on carceral lockdowns through the pandemic. “However lockdowns should not designed to do public well being work, they’re designed to punish, and that’s actually debilitating for incarcerated individuals.”
When prisons like CIW and CCWF go into full lockdown, all the prisoners are known as from their jobs or courses and redirected to their rooms. They’re lower off from entry to the yard — their major house for out of doors time — and the dayroom, an space that has elliptical machines, televisions, a library, pay telephones, and stations the place they’ll have video calls with family members. They’re additionally routinely “cell fed,” which signifies that meals and medicine are delivered to their rooms.
When the jail declares a “modified program” lockdown, individuals are nonetheless locked of their unit, however they’re allowed to go away with the intention to take a bathe, make a cellphone name, put mail of their mailbox, or do laundry.
Through the peak of Covid, lockdowns have been meant to guard the well being of incarcerated individuals by limiting alternatives for virus transmission. However that they had main detrimental impacts on girls’s well being in different methods.
Lozano began going via menopause on the identical time the pandemic unfolded. When she remembers these months, she remembers sizzling flashes, complications, physique aches, shedding her urge for food, and suicidal ideas introduced on by despair. She additionally remembers taking showers. “Showering is certainly one of my coping abilities,” she stated. “Each time I’m feeling one thing detrimental, I’m going into the bathe and let the water run over me.” Each evening, Lozano’s roommates at CCWF heard her crying. “It helped me launch what I used to be feeling inside,” she stated.
In 2020, she stated, she was typically locked in a cell for 23 hours per day or extra, for weeks or months at a time. She had no entry to recent air and must wait days to bathe. It felt unattainable — and terrifying — to deal with each the pandemic and the hormonal modifications taking place in her physique.
Tomiekia Johnson, who’s incarcerated at CCWF, stated that her interval hasn’t stopped for the previous two years. A vigorous notetaker, she’s monitoring her cycle, alongside along with her different signs which have cropped up within the wake of the pandemic, reminiscent of insomnia, vertigo, and hair loss. She attributes many of those modifications to the stress she’s skilled within the wake of lockdowns.
“When there’s a lockdown, you’re not going to have the ability to work that day, you’re not going to have the ability to go to high school that day, you’re not going to have the ability to go to the yard that day,” Johnson stated. “I’ve been incarcerated for 12 years and I’ve skilled what it’s wish to go to the yard at will, to go to group [programming], to work my job. This has completely modified issues, and the standard of my life has diminished considerably.”
Johnson used to work as a health teacher on the jail gymnasium, however she hasn’t been capable of return to her job as a result of there are nonetheless empty beds sitting within the fitness center — prepared for use within the occasion of a Covid surge.
Tomiekia’s sister, Terressa Johnson, talks on the cellphone with Johnson each week. As lockdowns grew to become extra prevalent at CCWF, she discovered that she needed to raise Tomiekia’s spirits each time they spoke.
“She’s burdened nearly all of the time,” Terressa Johnson stated of her sister. “She doesn’t have an outlet as a result of she will’t go to work, or she will’t go to the health middle, or she will’t take the courses she was taking. The final three years have been the worst for her psychological well being.”
Whereas lockdowns have been principally used through the begin of the Covid-19 outbreak to mitigate the illness’s unfold, the protocol is now used for a myriad of causes. The ladies interviewed for this story say that typically they’re given official causes for lockdowns, reminiscent of officer trainings, drones flying over the amenities, and employees shortages.
Different instances, they don’t even know why they’re in a multi-day lockdown. “I really feel just like the employees will use any excuse to lock us down as a result of it’s clearly quite a bit much less work after we’re locked in our rooms,” Fraher stated.
As of final July, incarcerated people at CIW and CCWF obtained entry to digital tablets, which permit them to ship messages, play video games, learn books, watch motion pictures, and stream music. “Now that we’ve bought tablets, we’re all supposed to only be quiet — you may as properly put us in a drawer,” stated Fraher. “If we didn’t have to come back out and get showered sometimes, [the officers] would by no means should do something.”
For many of the girls I spoke with for this story, holding busy throughout lockdowns isn’t the laborious half. Lots of them learn, do homework, paint, crochet, or watch motion pictures on their tablets. “We not too long ago bought the Calm app, and that’s my new go-to for stress,” Lozano stated. Lozano lives within the honor dorm, an incentive unit with additional privileges for individuals who have demonstrated good conduct.
However lockdowns do take away lots of the minimal freedoms incarcerated individuals rely on to keep up their bodily and psychological well being. “You’ll hear of all these in-cell fights taking place outdoors [of the honor dorm] after we’re locked down,” Lozano stated. “Psychological well being ought to be a high precedence in right here since you may have 4 individuals in a room, however perhaps there’s actually 100 personalities in that room — it makes an enormous distinction when you will have the choice to decompress by having yard or dayroom entry.”
Inmates say their incapacity to train throughout lockdowns has additionally adversely impacted their long-term bodily and psychological well being. Fraher, who’s 66, suffers from ongoing coronary heart and lung circumstances that make her utterly pacemaker-dependent. Her circumstances require common surgical procedure, so she walks a minimum of three hours per day to remain in form. “The one technique to survive is to maintain my lungs as sturdy as potential,” she stated. “Once we’re locked in, I can’t get out and work out.”
Lozano, who’s 48 and likewise suffers from a coronary heart situation, tries to recurrently jog. However as yard time disappeared with extra lockdowns, her ldl cholesterol shot up — a change she attributes to the dearth of train.
The variety of incarcerated individuals in California state prisons with psychological well being points has risen over the previous 10 years whilst the general inhabitants of prisoners has dropped, in keeping with a 2017 Stanford Justice Advocacy Venture evaluation of information from the CDCR. Lockdowns, in fact, compound this concern, additional isolating incarcerated populations. “Jail is such a punitive setting to start with,” stated Courtney Hanson, a coordinator at California Coalition for Girls Prisoners, an advocacy group. “Such a punishment turns into so merciless for folk who’ve power well being circumstances and are already weak.”
As we speak, Lozano is a vocal advocate for extra psychological well being sources at CCWF. She already co-founded the Juvenile Offenders Committee again in 2009, which helps girls who have been sentenced as adults once they have been juveniles with trauma schooling and substance misuse workshops.
Lozano additionally needs to work with native animal shelters and produce a cat remedy program to the jail, as she believes that therapeutic can begin with nurturing others. She’s at present attempting to begin a gaggle the place incarcerated girls can overtly discuss going via menopause. However she’s nonetheless anxious concerning the future.
“I’m not hopeful as a result of lockdowns seem to be our new regular,” she stated. “A correctional facility’s goal is to right — to rehabilitate. Lockdowns stop rehabilitation since you’re caught in your cell with out recent air, daylight, or train. It doesn’t permit us to mentally and bodily launch stress in order that we will work our rehabilitation, and in the end our therapeutic, to finally be launched and grow to be the individuals we have been created to be.”