{"id":22457,"date":"2020-06-18T14:40:57","date_gmt":"2020-06-18T14:40:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/arknews.org\/?p=22457"},"modified":"2020-06-24T14:17:54","modified_gmt":"2020-06-24T14:17:54","slug":"incarcerated-infected-and-ignored-inside-the-cummins-prison-outbreak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arknews.org\/index.php\/2020\/06\/18\/incarcerated-infected-and-ignored-inside-the-cummins-prison-outbreak\/","title":{"rendered":"Incarcerated, infected and ignored: inside the Cummins prison outbreak"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This story was produced in partnership with The Nation<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Friday, April 10, Dashujauhn \u201cHeavy\u201d Danzie heard that his fellow prisoner had finally gotten out of bed. During the previous week, everyone in the 9B barracks had watched nervously as the bedridden man kept coughing. Other prisoners told Heavy that the man had stood up and walked \u2014 or at least tried to. He collapsed on the way to the library and was taken to the infirmary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heavy had been a prisoner at Cummins Unit, one Arkansas\u2019s largest prisons, since 2017. He was sentenced to life without parole in 1995, and has shuffled around a few facilities since. He\u2019d seen sickness in the barracks before \u2014 that was simply life in prison. But this time, he said, he was terrified. He\u2019d heard there was no cure for COVID-19.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On a normal weekend the 51-year-old would wake up at 10 a.m., eat breakfast and then watch TV or a movie. If he could haggle to get the remote, he\u2019d turn on NASCAR or pick among \"Scarface,\" \"Baby Driver,\" or \"The Dukes of Hazzard.\" That Saturday, Heavy rose instead to discover that the guards had not unlocked the door to 9B, an open dorm that consists of a day room, a bathroom and a sleeping area with around 50 tightly packed beds. He said he knew something \u201ccrazy\u201d was about to happen when guards brought shrink-wrapped meals on Styrofoam trays rather than letting them eat in the chow hall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Around 7 p.m., guards escorted Heavy and the rest of 9B to the day room. A nurse used a nasal swab to test Heavy for COVID-19, which sunk him into what he called an \u201cimmediate depression.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI felt like, damn, if I come down with this, in this place, I\u2019m doomed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next morning Warden Aundrea Culclager and several guards came to the door of Heavy\u2019s barracks. The prisoners whose names she read off her phone were told to gather their stuff and leave. She called a few more names, then a few more. Heavy said he felt anxious and confused.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe had no idea if these were guys who were positive or negative,\u201d he said. \u201cThey wouldn\u2019t tell us. They just said they were moving them out. They wouldn\u2019t even tell us where they were moving them to.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But a few hours later, when the room was down to Heavy and about a dozen other prisoners, the guards started to bring everyone back. The prisoners who returned gave Heavy the rundown. \u201cThe whole barracks was positive,\u201d Heavy said. \u201cThey had more positive cases than they had room to house.\u201d Forty-four of the 47 men were infected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By April 28, 860 prisoners at Cummins Unit, almost half the population, had tested positive for COVID-19. By early June, at least 10 had died of the disease and 29 had been hospitalized. The prison had become the 10th-largest known cluster of infections in the country, according<\/a> to The New York Times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through phone interviews and letters sent in March, April and May, a dozen prisoners at Cummins gave firsthand accounts of the outbreak. (Most asked that their real names not be published out of fear of being punished; unless otherwise noted, prisoners\u2019 names are pseudonyms.) They described a slow response from Arkansas Department of Corrections officials, even as guards and prisoners were falling ill in early April. The ADC did not widely test prisoners for the virus until the middle of April and forced them to work in crowded conditions. Once the extent of the outbreak was acknowledged, prisoners say, officials locked sick inmates inside their barracks for weeks with inadequate food and scant medical attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As early as March 18<\/a>, activists had called on Governor Hutchinson and the state Parole Board to begin releasing prisoners. For over a month, Hutchinson resisted. It was not until April 20, with the outbreak raging at Cummins, that he finally directed the state Board of Corrections and the Parole Board to begin a review of prisoners to be considered for early release \u2014 but even then, the list was limited to those with nonviolent and nonsexual convictions who were already approaching their release dates. Two days later, the ACLU of Arkansas and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund filed a federal class action lawsuit on behalf of prisoners at Cummins and other facilities who said their medical histories put them especially at risk of the virus. The plaintiffs sued to compel state officials to release elderly and vulnerable prisoners and take more steps to control the outbreak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As of early June, only 19 prisoners at Cummins have been released. Most have remained quartered in their barracks, allowed outside for only three or four hours a week. Heavy had been on lockdown for more than 60 days. \u201cThey really dropped the ball when it came to COVID-19, because the only way we could\u2019ve gotten it is from someone outside bringing it in,\u201d Heavy said. \u201cThey didn\u2019t take precautions early on. That\u2019s failure to protect.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

EARLY FEARS<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Cummins Unit sits near the Arkansas River in the southeastern part of the state, on nearly 18,000 acres of farmland. Ever since it was established in 1902 on a former cotton plantation, it\u2019s been criticized for its brutal and often deadly conditions. In 1971, based on a lawsuit filed by Arkansas prisoners, a federal judge found the state\u2019s entire prison system to be in violation of the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Arkansas\u2019s prisons remained under court oversight until 1982. But like in many of the state\u2019s prisons, the ADC continued to cram prisoners into Cummins. The prison was built to house a maximum of 1,876 men. Today, it holds about 1,950.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the open barracks at Cummins Unit, beds are about three feet apart. \u201cI\u2019m 5 feet 9 inches, one prisoner said. \u201cIf I was to lay on my bed and extend my arms while lying on my back, I can touch the next bed.\u201d In the chow hall, three to four barracks\u2019 worth of men are fed at a time. \u201cWe\u2019re always rubbing elbows in line,\u201d another prisoner said. They eat four to a table, with little room between seats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In early March, some prisoners learned about COVID-19 from friends and family; others heard about it from TV news. But prisoners say officials never formally told them about the pandemic. Instead, the ADC simply posted signs, beginning on March 11,<\/strong> that instructed prisoners to wash their hands with soap and hot water for a full 20 seconds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Photo by Brian Chilson<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

News broadcasts advised social distancing, but that wasn\u2019t possible for prisoners. Kaleem Nazeem, an activist with the Arkansas prison reform nonprofit DecARcerate<\/a>, saw the potential for disaster. \u201cI\u2019m very concerned,\u201d Nazeem, who did time at Cummins in the late 2000s, said in an interview in mid-March. \u201cIt\u2019s one thing to be out here in the world where you can isolate yourself and, as they say, practice social distancing. But it\u2019s another thing when you\u2019re incarcerated, and you don\u2019t really have a choice of who you\u2019re around.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Initially, the ADC sought to prevent an outbreak by limiting who could enter the facility. It also began to subject guards to a temperature check when they reported to work. Anyone with a temperature higher than 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit would be sent home. On March 16, officials announced that they were suspending visitation, including prisoners\u2019 meetings with their attorneys, for 21 days. To make up for this, the ADC reduced the price of phone calls from 20 cents per minute to 15. But this cost was still prohibitive for many prisoners and their families, especially during a pandemic. \u201cI think they should suspend the amount,\u201d Nazeem said in March. \u201cIt\u2019s very important to have family members to contact. Your family can save your life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While guards could go home sick, prisoners had to keep working. Cummins, like many other prisons in Arkansas and across the South, relies on the labor of unpaid prisoners to function. Prisoners act as \u201cessential workers\u201d: They clean the barracks and the chow hall, sew and launder their clothes and bedsheets, staff the library and cook the food. An individual prisoner may interact with dozens, sometimes hundreds, of people throughout a shift.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because Cummins is also a working farm, prisoners harvest corn and soybeans and slaughter pigs, cows and chickens. Each morning at 6, hundreds of prisoners assigned to \u201choe squad,\u201d the term for field work, are called to present themselves at the prison\u2019s entrance, told to \u201cdeuce up\u201d (meaning stand two-by-two in a line), and board a narrow trailer. They\u2019re taken to the fields, where guards watch them from horseback. It\u2019s a job that prisoners despise. \u201cYou wanna see some real-life slave stuff going on? Look at them guys on hoe squad,\u201d said Thaddeus Williams, who was incarcerated at Cummins in the early 2000s. \u201cYou in these fields, and all you doing is beating on the earth. You might go four, five miles just doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout March, hoe squad was assigned to swing-blade the grass in muddy ditches around a chicken plant reeking of ammonia. Prisoners worked shoulder to shoulder without masks, and some started to question whether they should be working at all. On March 26, Gregory Martin, a prisoner who gave permission for his real name to be used, wrote a grievance asking for hoe squad to stop. \u201cThere\u2019s a global pandemic that\u2019s air-born[e], that\u2019s killing thousands of people,\u201d he wrote. \u201cMy family isn\u2019t allowed to come see me for the same reason that everything in the country is shut down for. I\u2019m being forced to go out into the field, thus putting my life in danger.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But officials seemed keen on keeping prisoners at work. Martin said guards laughed him off; his grievance was returned to him with the cover sheet still on top.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On March 27, officials told prisoners assigned to the garment factory that during the weekend they could volunteer to manufacture masks that would be distributed throughout the state\u2019s prison system. But one prisoner was forced to keep sewing in early April despite having symptoms consistent with COVID-19, including sweating to the point that \u201chis clothes were completely saturated,\u201d according to a declaration submitted by his mother as part of the ACLU lawsuit. The prison workers made masks out of the same material as their clothes and bedsheets, which were very thin. Prisoners said they seemed to offer little protection against COVID-19. But when they tried to make thicker masks for themselves, according to multiple prisoners, guards threatened to write them up for contraband and send them to solitary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

FIRST POSITIVE TEST<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

On April 1, the first ADC staff member at Cummins, a farmworker, tested positive for the virus. Despite the result, the ADC did not begin mass testing prisoners, said Cindy Murphy, an ADC spokesperson, because the state health department had determined that the farmworker had not been in contact with prisoners. Nor did the ADC track which or how many of its employees had tested positive. Murphy said the department has records of 17 employees who tested positive in early April, but \u201cwe can\u2019t give you a precise number because some employees used other providers for tests.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prisoners and guards alike soon began to fall sick. One prisoner, Cameron, recalled that on April 10 he went to the infirmary with a severe headache and other symptoms he feared were signs of COVID-19. \u201cI informed them that I had a real bad case of diarrhea \u2014 that I couldn\u2019t smell, I couldn\u2019t taste,\u201d he said in an April 25 interview. \u201cThey gave me two Tylenol and shipped me back to the barracks.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cameron did not receive a test for COVID-19. In fact, up until April 11, only one prisoner at Cummins was tested for COVID-19, and the test came back negative. But prisoners were still required to go to work as the outbreak spread. Hoe squad continued, Martin recalled, until illness forced it to a halt on April 10. \u201cThe last actual day, our hoe squad supervisor, she jumped off of her horse because she wasn\u2019t feeling good,\u201d Martin said. \u201cShe threw up, and lieutenants all came down off horses and surrounded her.\u201d (An ADC spokesperson said the department is not aware of this incident.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That Sunday, April 12, was the day that Heavy and most of the rest of 9B barracks tested positive for the coronavirus. Around 8:30 that night, a violent rainstorm knocked out the unit\u2019s power. Without air conditioning, Heavy\u2019s newly quarantined barracks started to grow hot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

John Ponder, a 39-year-old prisoner who allowed his real name be used, said the backup generator failed in his barracks. \u201cWe had no lights and no ventilation,\u201d he said. By midnight, dinner still hadn\u2019t been served in many parts of the prison and \u201cpill call,\u201d when medication is distributed, had been delayed. Prisoners in multiple barracks broke their windows in protest. At 2:30 am, guards wearing face masks served food.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Monday morning, there was still no power at the unit, and breakfast was meager: a thin pancake, a flat sausage patty and three slices of pear. When the power finally returned at 8 p.m., Ponder\u2019s barracks turned on the TV as they waited for dinner. On the news, they saw that Governor Hutchinson had announced the positive test results to the public: COVID-19 was officially at Cummins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During Hutchinson\u2019s press conference, a reporter asked the governor to address growing calls to release prisoners, as had been done in California and New York. Hutchinson, who previously worked as a tough-on-crime U.S. attorney, pushed back. \u201cThere\u2019s a reason these inmates are in a maximum-security unit,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t see that happening. If it spreads more broadly, there are potential plans we could look at.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hutchinson also dismissed calls for broader testing at Cummins. The governor simply said he was hopeful the outbreak was \u201ccontained.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inside Cummins, officials implemented a series of measures meant to slow the spread of the virus. The same day as the governor\u2019s announcement, they tested a random sample of inmates in other barracks, and discovered that the virus had spread throughout the prison. Guards separated out the prisoners who had tested positive and placed all barracks on \u201clockdown.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heavy said the guards wouldn\u2019t even go inside the 9B barracks. Staff served meals through a slot in the door and treated prisoners like \u201clepers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the days passed, many of the younger men locked inside began to argue with each other while older prisoners tried to keep the peace. \u201cIt\u2019s hard because we got all these different personalities and tempers flying around,\u201d Heavy explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It didn\u2019t help that food service began to deteriorate, he added. Some prisoners said they had to buy food from the commissary to make up for the lack of meals. \u201cRight now, we\u2019ve got guys at Cummins missing meals and going a very long time between the meals, because they\u2019ve relied so heavily on inmates to work the kitchen,\u201d said Cristy Park, a lawyer with Disability Rights Arkansas, which is litigating the case against the ADC alongside the ACLU. \u201cThis crisis has shown us how vulnerable it makes [the ADC] to rely so much on inmate labor.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Photo by Brian Chilson<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Under normal circumstances, prisoners risk being written up and sent to solitary confinement if they don\u2019t go to work. From January 2019 to May 2020, Cummins Unit guards wrote 378 disciplinary reports for \u201cout of place of job assignment\u201d that resulted in a prisoner being punished with solitary confinement, according to data obtained by the Arkansas Nonprofit News Network and The Nation. Another 192 disciplinary reports were written for unexcused absences. Anti-prison advocates have criticized the use of solitary as fortifying a system of slave labor, noting that prisoners in Arkansas are disproportionately black. \u201cThey use it as a weapon,\u201d said a former guard who worked at Cummins Unit in 2018 and requested anonymity because her husband is incarcerated at the prison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the outbreak exploded, some jobs, such as hoe squad, simply stopped while others were still expected to perform their duties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even though he tested positive, Heavy said he\u2019s had to keep working. He\u2019s a picket man, meaning he sorts and folds laundry. \u201cI been working throughout the quarantine, I pretty much don\u2019t have a choice,\u201d he said. \u201cIf I don\u2019t work, they\u2019ll turn around and write a disciplinary.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TWO WEEKS LATER<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Shortly before his barracks was tested on April 15, a prisoner named Kyle said a guard came in looking unwell. \u201cWe could look at her and tell that she was sick,\u201d he said. \u201cShe was all around the barracks, coughing, making rounds.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That same day, the ADC decided that staff members who had tested positive but were asymptomatic could return to work at the facilities where \u201ccritical activities cannot occur without the use of these workers.\u201d When questioned later about this policy, the ADC said that positive but asymptomatic guards were assigned to barracks that had tested positive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Sunday, April 19, almost 350 prisoners at Cummins had tested positive, according to records from the Arkansas Department of Health. Ponder, who has high blood pressure, had not received his medication in a week and worried that he might have had a mild stroke as a result, according to his wife\u2019s declaration in the ACLU lawsuit. \u201cThe right side of his body and face is affected,\u201d she said. He also tested positive for COVID-19.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nearly all prisoners were forbidden to leave their barracks, not even to go to the recreation yard. \u201cThe most important thing they can do right now is give us some sunlight,\u201d a 62-year-old prisoner named Michael said after he tested positive. \u201cWe are getting no fresh air. Everybody in here sick, everybody coughing on each other. It\u2019s one big germ.\u201d He said he was walking laps around his barracks to feel better and wait the quarantine out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On April 20, Hutchinson finally directed the Board of Corrections to review around 1,200 inmates for possible release. The move fell far short of the mass humanitarian gesture that activists had called for: As of June 9, the ADC had released 19 prisoners at Cummins out of the 44 that had been approved. Across the state\u2019s entire prison system, it has let out only 648 prisoners out of more 18,000 incarcerated individuals. ADC spokesperson Murphy said the Parole Board is continuing the review process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cReducing the population is the No. 1 thing,\u201d said Josiah Rich, an epidemiologist<\/a> at the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights. \u201cAnybody who knows anything about corrections knows that if you don\u2019t have some empty wards, you can\u2019t social distance anybody, and you\u2019re hosed. They missed the boat on that one, and that\u2019s why they got such an epidemic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the end of April approached, the ADC seemed eager to wrap up testing. At a press conference on April 22, Health Secretary Nathaniel Smith declared testing finished at Cummins Unit. But the next day, the ADC and the Arkansas Department of Health ordered new tests. A prisoner had tested positive in the South Hall, where prison officials had thought the virus had not previously spread.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More prisoners began to require hospitalization. Officials set up a 20-bed field hospital in the visitation room that could provide oxygen therapy, but because it didn\u2019t have ventilators or other equipment, an increasing number of men were hospitalized outside of Cummins. In an April 21 e-mail, Department of Corrections Director Dexter Payne told the state\u2019s prison wardens to ensure that officers transporting inmates to hospitals were wearing masks. \u201cHospitals are not wanting to treat our inmates because our staff are not following the guidelines that we are sending out,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By April 29, ADC records show that there were five prisoners from Cummins at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock and six at Jefferson Regional Medical Center in Pine Bluff. Three were on ventilators. The ADC had finished testing nearly every prisoner at Cummins Unit; the virus had found its way to every part of the prison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But that fact didn\u2019t seem to have sunk in for ADC officials. On April 30, Department of Correction Secretary Wendy Kelly wrote an e-mail to the wardens, asking them to \u201cplease have the inmates\/residents sleep with their heads of every other bed on one end, and every alternate bed on the other.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

John Craig, a warden at the Benton Unit, responded that same day, \u201cI put that in place several weeks ago as a precautionary measure!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A MONTH LATER<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The first Cummins prisoners died in early May. On Friday, May 1, a 61-year-old prisoner died at Jefferson Regional. He was followed Saturday morning by a second prisoner, a 65-year-old, who also died there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Saturday, Heavy said he\u2019d heard that a guard had delivered bologna sandwiches to one of the barracks in the East Hall. \u201cThe guys were like, \u2018What do you mean, this is our dinner?\u2019\u201d Heavy said. The Cummins employee is rumored to have retorted that they should be happy to be fed at all. In response, prisoners lit a trash can on fire and broke two windows. Guards deployed tear gas and hog-tied the prisoners in the barracks that started the disturbance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Photo by Brian Chilson<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The tear gas seeped into Heavy\u2019s barracks. During the unrest, as men in 9B were washing their faces with wet cloth or milk, he said a fellow prisoner opened the door to ask a guard to turn on a fan to clear the fumes. A guard shot him in the face with a rubber bullet, and he crumpled in the hallway. Fellow prisoners dragged him back into the unit, but, according to Heavy, hours passed before guards took him to the infirmary. \u201cThey left him in a puddle of his own blood,\u201d he said. (The ADC says any inmates \u201caffected\u201d in the \u201cdisturbance\u201d were evaluated in compliance with protocol.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That same night, guards wheeled a 29-year-old prisoner named Derick Coley to the infirmary. Ciara, a relative of Coley\u2019s who requested a pseudonym because she\u2019s on probation, received a call from one of Coley\u2019s best friends, who is also incarcerated at Cummins. Ciara said the friend told her he had seen the guards moving Coley, whose lips looked pale and who could barely hold his head up. \u201cHe said he thinks Derick died, that somebody said Derick died, to please call and find out,\u201d Ciara said. She could hear how scared Coley\u2019s friend was. \u201cHe was so messed up; he was so upset.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At 1:30 am, the prison called Coley\u2019s mother: Derick was dead. Coley\u2019s family was devastated. Coley had just been discharged from the hospital after testing positive for COVID-19, which Ciara said seemed like a good sign. Every time the family called about him, prison officials would \u201cjust keep telling us he\u2019s better, he\u2019s getting better, that\u2019s all they would say,\u201d she said. He had been up for parole in June, and they had hoped he might be sent home. The coroner\u2019s report doesn\u2019t list a cause of death, and the ADC has opened a criminal investigation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the early hours of Sunday, May 3, two more prisoners died of COVID-19. Three more would die over the course of the next week. The number of positive cases continued to climb into mid-May and reached over 950 by May 19. Officially, 10 prisoners at Cummins have died of COVID-19 to date.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TWO MONTHS LATER<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In late May, prison officials started to serve regular meals in the chow hall and give the men in Heavy\u2019s barracks an hour in the recreation yard once every other day. When they let him out, it was the first time Heavy had been outside in weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By June 15, the ADC said<\/a> there were only four active cases inside the prison. But Danyelle McNeill, a spokesperson for the health department, said that no prisoners are being retested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

COVID-19 outbreaks have erupted at two other prisons run by the ADC. As of June 15, 286 prisoners at the Randall L. Williams Correctional Facility in Pine Bluff had tested positive for the virus (most have since been declared recovered). The state\u2019s newest hotspot is the East Arkansas Regional Unit in Brickeys (Lee County), which has 475 active cases. And a federal prison in Forrest City has seen at least nearly 700 infections among prisoners and staff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mass release advocates have sued for isn\u2019t likely to happen any time soon. On May 19, the judge in the ACLU lawsuit denied the request for a preliminary injunction, ruling that the ADC ultimately adopted many of the policies sought by plaintiffs. A trial has been set for April 2021. On June 3, U.S. Magistrate Judge Beth Deere combined more than 100 lawsuits filed by prisoners at Cummins Unit into a single federal class-action suit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many prisoners remain furious that ADC officials told them little or nothing about what was going on throughout the crisis. Several men said that no one, not a counselor or a religious adviser, has come to offer comfort. \u201cAlmost everybody in the barrack got COVID-19, but not once has a mental health counselor been down here to talk to us, soothe us, tell us it\u2019s gonna be OK,\u201d Kyle said. \u201cThis is stressful because, honestly, we don\u2019t know whether we gonna live or die. This is a mental health issue.\u201d Ponder wrote in a letter in late May that guards \u201cwill no longer tell us how many men here have died from Covid.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the worst of the crisis seems to have lifted, prisoners say Cummins Unit has a long way to go until normalcy is restored. \u201cThis crisis could have been prevented,\u201d Ponder wrote. \u201cBut now it is too late.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This reporting is courtesy of The Nation<\/a> and the Arkansas Nonprofit News Network<\/a>, an independent, nonpartisan news project dedicated to producing journalism that matters to Arkansans.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Inmates at Arkansas’s Cummins Unit say guards treated them like \u201clepers\u201d as COVID-19 tore through the penitentiary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":22461,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[155,147],"tags":[17,223],"class_list":["post-22457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-coronavirus","category-criminal-justice","tag-asa-hutchinson","tag-cummins-unit"],"yoast_head":"\nIncarcerated, infected and ignored: inside the Cummins prison outbreak - Arkansas Nonprofit News Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/arknews.org\/index.php\/2020\/06\/18\/incarcerated-infected-and-ignored-inside-the-cummins-prison-outbreak\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Incarcerated, infected and ignored: inside the Cummins prison outbreak - Arkansas Nonprofit News Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Inmates at Arkansas's Cummins Unit say guards treated them like \u201clepers\u201d as COVID-19 tore through the penitentiary.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/arknews.org\/index.php\/2020\/06\/18\/incarcerated-infected-and-ignored-inside-the-cummins-prison-outbreak\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Arkansas Nonprofit News Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-06-18T14:40:57+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-06-24T14:17:54+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/arknews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/cummins-3.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1250\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"764\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Molly Minta\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"22 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/arknews.org\/#organization\",\"name\":\"Arkansas Nonprofit News Network\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/arknews.org\/\",\"sameAs\":[],\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/arknews.org\/#logo\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/arknews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/annn_logo.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/arknews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/annn_logo.png\",\"width\":1200,\"height\":900,\"caption\":\"Arkansas Nonprofit News Network\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/arknews.org\/#logo\"}},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/arknews.org\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/arknews.org\/\",\"name\":\"Arkansas Nonprofit News Network\",\"description\":\"\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/arknews.org\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/arknews.org\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/arknews.org\/index.php\/2020\/06\/18\/incarcerated-infected-and-ignored-inside-the-cummins-prison-outbreak\/#primaryimage\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/arknews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/cummins-3.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/arknews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/cummins-3.jpg\",\"width\":1250,\"height\":764,\"caption\":\"Cummins Prison (Credit: Brian Chilson)\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/arknews.org\/index.php\/2020\/06\/18\/incarcerated-infected-and-ignored-inside-the-cummins-prison-outbreak\/#webpage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/arknews.org\/index.php\/2020\/06\/18\/incarcerated-infected-and-ignored-inside-the-cummins-prison-outbreak\/\",\"name\":\"Incarcerated, infected and ignored: inside the Cummins prison outbreak - Arkansas Nonprofit News Network\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/arknews.org\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/arknews.org\/index.php\/2020\/06\/18\/incarcerated-infected-and-ignored-inside-the-cummins-prison-outbreak\/#primaryimage\"},\"datePublished\":\"2020-06-18T14:40:57+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-06-24T14:17:54+00:00\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/arknews.org\/index.php\/2020\/06\/18\/incarcerated-infected-and-ignored-inside-the-cummins-prison-outbreak\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/arknews.org\/index.php\/2020\/06\/18\/incarcerated-infected-and-ignored-inside-the-cummins-prison-outbreak\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/arknews.org\/index.php\/2020\/06\/18\/incarcerated-infected-and-ignored-inside-the-cummins-prison-outbreak\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/arknews.org\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Incarcerated, infected and ignored: inside the Cummins prison outbreak\"}]},{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/arknews.org\/index.php\/2020\/06\/18\/incarcerated-infected-and-ignored-inside-the-cummins-prison-outbreak\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/arknews.org\/index.php\/2020\/06\/18\/incarcerated-infected-and-ignored-inside-the-cummins-prison-outbreak\/#webpage\"},\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/arknews.org\/#\/schema\/person\/4965c2a8d54052a20c56cef6f08863db\"},\"headline\":\"Incarcerated, infected and ignored: inside the Cummins prison outbreak\",\"datePublished\":\"2020-06-18T14:40:57+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-06-24T14:17:54+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/arknews.org\/index.php\/2020\/06\/18\/incarcerated-infected-and-ignored-inside-the-cummins-prison-outbreak\/#webpage\"},\"wordCount\":4359,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/arknews.org\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/arknews.org\/index.php\/2020\/06\/18\/incarcerated-infected-and-ignored-inside-the-cummins-prison-outbreak\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/arknews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/cummins-3.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Asa Hutchinson\",\"Cummins Unit\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Coronavirus\",\"Criminal Justice\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/arknews.org\/index.php\/2020\/06\/18\/incarcerated-infected-and-ignored-inside-the-cummins-prison-outbreak\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/arknews.org\/#\/schema\/person\/4965c2a8d54052a20c56cef6f08863db\",\"name\":\"Molly Minta\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/arknews.org\/#personlogo\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/472807a3b3cbd85c2ee63b0ca2d063717c545b78825d43a6e3112b747c2e2508?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/472807a3b3cbd85c2ee63b0ca2d063717c545b78825d43a6e3112b747c2e2508?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Molly Minta\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/arknews.org\/index.php\/author\/mollyminta\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Incarcerated, infected and ignored: inside the Cummins prison outbreak - Arkansas Nonprofit News Network","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/arknews.org\/index.php\/2020\/06\/18\/incarcerated-infected-and-ignored-inside-the-cummins-prison-outbreak\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Incarcerated, infected and ignored: inside the Cummins prison outbreak - Arkansas Nonprofit News Network","og_description":"Inmates at Arkansas's Cummins Unit say guards treated them like \u201clepers\u201d as COVID-19 tore through the penitentiary.","og_url":"https:\/\/arknews.org\/index.php\/2020\/06\/18\/incarcerated-infected-and-ignored-inside-the-cummins-prison-outbreak\/","og_site_name":"Arkansas Nonprofit News Network","article_published_time":"2020-06-18T14:40:57+00:00","article_modified_time":"2020-06-24T14:17:54+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1250,"height":764,"url":"http:\/\/arknews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/cummins-3.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Molly Minta","Est. reading time":"22 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/arknews.org\/#organization","name":"Arkansas Nonprofit News Network","url":"https:\/\/arknews.org\/","sameAs":[],"logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/arknews.org\/#logo","inLanguage":"en-US","url":"https:\/\/arknews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/annn_logo.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/arknews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/annn_logo.png","width":1200,"height":900,"caption":"Arkansas Nonprofit News Network"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/arknews.org\/#logo"}},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/arknews.org\/#website","url":"https:\/\/arknews.org\/","name":"Arkansas Nonprofit News Network","description":"","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/arknews.org\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/arknews.org\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/arknews.org\/index.php\/2020\/06\/18\/incarcerated-infected-and-ignored-inside-the-cummins-prison-outbreak\/#primaryimage","inLanguage":"en-US","url":"https:\/\/arknews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/cummins-3.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/arknews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/cummins-3.jpg","width":1250,"height":764,"caption":"Cummins Prison (Credit: Brian Chilson)"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/arknews.org\/index.php\/2020\/06\/18\/incarcerated-infected-and-ignored-inside-the-cummins-prison-outbreak\/#webpage","url":"https:\/\/arknews.org\/index.php\/2020\/06\/18\/incarcerated-infected-and-ignored-inside-the-cummins-prison-outbreak\/","name":"Incarcerated, infected and ignored: inside the Cummins prison outbreak - Arkansas Nonprofit News Network","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/arknews.org\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/arknews.org\/index.php\/2020\/06\/18\/incarcerated-infected-and-ignored-inside-the-cummins-prison-outbreak\/#primaryimage"},"datePublished":"2020-06-18T14:40:57+00:00","dateModified":"2020-06-24T14:17:54+00:00","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/arknews.org\/index.php\/2020\/06\/18\/incarcerated-infected-and-ignored-inside-the-cummins-prison-outbreak\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/arknews.org\/index.php\/2020\/06\/18\/incarcerated-infected-and-ignored-inside-the-cummins-prison-outbreak\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/arknews.org\/index.php\/2020\/06\/18\/incarcerated-infected-and-ignored-inside-the-cummins-prison-outbreak\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/arknews.org\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Incarcerated, infected and ignored: inside the Cummins prison outbreak"}]},{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/arknews.org\/index.php\/2020\/06\/18\/incarcerated-infected-and-ignored-inside-the-cummins-prison-outbreak\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/arknews.org\/index.php\/2020\/06\/18\/incarcerated-infected-and-ignored-inside-the-cummins-prison-outbreak\/#webpage"},"author":{"@id":"https:\/\/arknews.org\/#\/schema\/person\/4965c2a8d54052a20c56cef6f08863db"},"headline":"Incarcerated, infected and ignored: inside the Cummins prison outbreak","datePublished":"2020-06-18T14:40:57+00:00","dateModified":"2020-06-24T14:17:54+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/arknews.org\/index.php\/2020\/06\/18\/incarcerated-infected-and-ignored-inside-the-cummins-prison-outbreak\/#webpage"},"wordCount":4359,"commentCount":0,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/arknews.org\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/arknews.org\/index.php\/2020\/06\/18\/incarcerated-infected-and-ignored-inside-the-cummins-prison-outbreak\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/arknews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/cummins-3.jpg","keywords":["Asa Hutchinson","Cummins Unit"],"articleSection":["Coronavirus","Criminal Justice"],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/arknews.org\/index.php\/2020\/06\/18\/incarcerated-infected-and-ignored-inside-the-cummins-prison-outbreak\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/arknews.org\/#\/schema\/person\/4965c2a8d54052a20c56cef6f08863db","name":"Molly Minta","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/arknews.org\/#personlogo","inLanguage":"en-US","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/472807a3b3cbd85c2ee63b0ca2d063717c545b78825d43a6e3112b747c2e2508?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/472807a3b3cbd85c2ee63b0ca2d063717c545b78825d43a6e3112b747c2e2508?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Molly Minta"},"url":"https:\/\/arknews.org\/index.php\/author\/mollyminta\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arknews.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arknews.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arknews.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arknews.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arknews.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arknews.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22457\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arknews.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arknews.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arknews.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arknews.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}