The number of prisoners in quarantine outnumbers tests conducted 6 to 1
On April 23, a prisoner at Oregon State Penitentiary named Michael Kell published an article on Propeller claiming workers were directed to remove biohazard labels from laundry bags coming into the prison laundry from hospitals treating COVID-19 patients. The same day, it was announced that an incarcerated laundry worker tested positive for the virus 200 miles away at Two Rivers Correctional Institution in Umatilla.
Oregon Correctional Enterprises, a semi-independent state agency that operates laundry facilities and other industries within Oregon’s prisons, has since closed the laundry at Two Rivers for at least 14 days. According to Oregon Department of Corrections (ODOC) spokesperson Vanessa Vanderzee, the prisoner who tested positive was moved to the infirmary at Snake River Correctional Institution and Health Services is “now working on contact testing.”
As of press time, 40 prisoners at Two Rivers are in quarantine and one is in medical isolation, but only six COVID-19 tests have been conducted within the prison, according to ODOC’s tally. Two of those tests came back positive, four negative and one is still pending.
There are 168 laundry employees at the facility and an additional 50 prisoners work in the manufacturing and upholstery shops, which are located in the same building and are also shut down, according to the department.
Vanderzee said the prisoner who tested positive worked on what is known as the “clean” side of the laundry facility, where washed linens are processed.
Two women on the outside, each involved with a different prisoner at Two Rivers, reached out separately to contributing reporters to share concerns about how the pandemic is being handled within the prison.
Hly Yang is engaged to a prisoner at Two Rivers with whom she has two children, Jason Ellis.
“I am very worried about him and the many stories he tells me over our emails and letters,” Yang told Street Roots. “Jason has told me there are many active Covid-19 cases in his facility.”
On Monday, Ellis told Street Roots over the phone from Two Rivers that most prisoners showing COVID-19 symptoms at the prison are being held in solitary confinement units, but since those units have filled up, he said, some are being isolated in their cells.
“These guys come out and use the telephones, get on the video visit kiosk, have video visits, sit at the tables, play poker for 30 to 45 minutes a day, and there is not much sanitation involved after they go back in,” Ellis said. He said these prisoners are showing symptoms, and some he said, “look like death.”
He asked his fiancé to reach out to Street Roots because he feels unsafe.
“I have two boys at home,” Ellis said, “and I’m just terrified of catching something that I can’t recover from. … There’s so many guys in here scared out of their wits, and we really don’t know what direction to take in here.”
As of April 28, according to ODOC, 600 adults in custody were in quarantine across the state because they had been in close contact with a COVID-19 case. But only 108 prisoners have been tested for the COVID-19 virus, according to ODOC tracking . That’s less than 1 percent of Oregon’s 14,458 prison population.
To date, 18 people in custody have tested positive and 25 tests are still pending. Twenty-four prisoners are in medical isolation, which according to ODOC, is how confirmed or suspected cases are housed. No prisoner has yet been transferred to a hospital for treatment.
Ellis said the onus is on prisoners to report their symptoms voluntarily.
“There’s no pressure to report it; there’s no periodic check system; they’re relying on the inmates to report themselves if they feel sick,” he said. This claim was confirmed by ODOC spokesperson, Vanderzee. She said prisoners who work certain jobs are screened for symptoms before reporting for duty, however other prisoners are screened only when being transferred or going through intake or release. She said in an email, “in some cases adults in custody (AICs) will need to self-report symptoms.”
This is a problem, Ellis said, because once prisoners report they’re sick, they’re put in solitary confinement, which is typically used as punishment. Therefore, many aren’t reporting themselves. They fear that going into isolation would mean losing their ability to earn money, their jobs, and in some cases, their living quarters, as well as losing contact with their families, he said.
The other woman, whose husband is also incarcerated at Two Rivers, shared information about the shut down, but requested her name not be used to protect her husband. She said she wanted the public to know what was happening.
“For families like mine it’s so scary, and we feel so helpless because there is nothing we can do,” she said. “I get (that) people will think ‘they are incarcerated so they are bad people,’ but that is not always the case.”
The day after Two Rivers received its positive test results, civil rights and criminal justice reform groups gathered in vehicles outside Oregon State Penitentiary to protest mass incarceration and demand the release of prisoners.
Terrance Hayes, a former prisoner and member of Oregon DA for the People, said Oregon Gov. Kate Brown’s reluctance to release prisoners during the pandemic is “pure nonsense.”
“(Prisoners) are not too dangerous to sleep next to you and fight a fire with you, they're not too dangerous to answer phone calls for the Oregon Health Plan or for the DMV or have access to your information, but apparently they are too dangerous to come home and safely exist with their families,” he said.
Brown has opposed a large-scale release of prisoners following an ODOC report that indicated approximately 5,800 people would need to be released in order to meet public health recommendations for social distancing and isolation protocols within Oregon’s prisons during the pandemic.
Oregon Justice Resource Center filed a class action suit on April 6 in federal court against Brown and ODOC, demanding they take actions necessary to implement public health mandates and that they ensure the protection of prisoners with underlying medical conditions that make them especially vulnerable to the virus. The group’s executive director, Bobbin Singh, has accused Brown of indifference.
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A recent survey from DHM Research found a slight majority of Oregonians support releasing prisoners with shorter sentences and those deemed a low-risk to the community amid the pandemic.
There was opposition, however, to releasing medically fragile prisoners, and 68% said they opposed a general release of prisoners solely to meet social distancing guidelines recommended by the CDC.
DHM Research has also indicated Brown’s job approval rating is at its highest point since she came into office in 2015.
Brown’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Routine Procedures
Echoing accounts from prisoners across Oregon’s state prison system who fear their lives are in danger from exposure to COVID-19, a prisoner on the front lines of the prison industry’s laundry supply chain described the current living and working conditions at Mill Creek Correctional Facility in Salem as “insane” and begged a family member to request help for vulnerable prisoners and workers.
“We can see the news,” the prisoner wrote in a text message from early April. “We can hear the talking points and false narratives concerning the many safety protocols being instituted for our safety. They are untrue. We are all scared.”
“Martin,” who requested his real name not be used, said workers at Mill Creek’s laundry sorting facility are regularly exposed to blood, feces, urine, pieces of flesh and medical waste contained in hospital linens — including laundry from medical wards housing patients who have tested positive for COVID-19.
Prisoners at Two Rivers, Mill Creek, Oregon State Penitentiary and Coffee Creek Correctional Facility have all raised concerns about working conditions in laundry facilities and facing retaliation for speaking out.
“The potential for retaliation is high for everything,” Martin said. “For this phone call, for not working, for trying to change jobs ... you know what I mean?”
Prisoners at other state prisons told The Guardian and Vice they were disciplined for talking to the press and threatened with punishment for refusing to work shifts — claims ODOC denies.
Dan White, a prisoner at Two Rivers who worked in the same laundry facility as the person who tested positive, described working conditions to Willamette Week as 80 people “crammed in a little room” without personal protective equipment.
"I'm worried that I won't make it back out to my family,” White told the paper. “I wasn't sent to die in here."
The laundry where Martin works sorts soiled linens from health care facilities across the state before it is transported to Oregon State Penitentiary for washing, drying and folding.
“There's no social distancing,” Martin said. ”We're not given booties. We're not given showers before we leave the job. We have to wear our N95 masks ... but we have to wear them for a week, and in order to take the mask off either you have to touch the mask with your bare hands or with a glove.”
According to Oregon Corrections Enterprises spokeswoman Jennifer Starbuck, “Per CDC and the short supply of PPEs, the decision was made to wear (N95 masks) for five days. If the masks get soiled (workers) can exchange them out for new ones.”
Martin said he recently stopped treatment for an autoimmune disease that caused adverse health effects and made him more susceptible to contracting COVID-19. He also said he worries about access to adequate health care and doubts the ability of prison officials to keep prisoners safe.
“This guy was in here literally begging to be seen by a doctor and to get tested for COVID and they wouldn't do it,” Martin said. “One of the guards broke down crying about it the day before yesterday.
“He was damn-near dying, and they're basically telling him to gargle with salt water,” he continued. “They finally just took him out.”
Spokespersons for Mill Creek and ODOC did not respond to repeated questions about access to medical treatment at the facility and recent transfers for medical treatment. The department’s COVID-19 tracking page currently shows zero confirmed cases of the virus at Mill Creek.
Sarah Fortune, a professor and chair of the department of immunology and infectious diseases at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, said the working conditions described sounded “grim,” but added there are currently no known cases of coronavirus transmission through fabrics such as soiled hospital linens. A recent study found the virus causing COVID-19 can persist for several hours to days in the air and on surfaces, but fabrics were not included in the study.
The CDC provides guidelines for laundry services utilized by health care facilities, and the guidance for COVID-19 states that management of laundry should “be performed in accordance with routine procedures .”
But because incarcerated workers in Oregon don’t enjoy the same legal status as workers outside prison walls, it’s not clear what workplace safety and health standards apply and what procedures are being followed.
The News-Review in Roseburg reported earlier this month that Oregon’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) increased its enforcement activity “following an avalanche of COVID-19-related complaints it has received over the past several weeks.”
Aaron Corvin, spokesperson for Oregon OSHA, said “We received complaints (about DOC facilities), but I don’t believe we identified complainants that were in state custody. Anonymous complaints may have been."
“The complaint was investigated and (Oregon Corrections Enterprises) was found to be operating under acceptable health care laundry standards,” she said. “There were no substantial infection prevention and control issues.”
“All of the OCE staff working are essential”
After three people were arrested in 2018 for protesting Oregon Health Science University's use of prison labor, activists sent an open letter to OHSU President Danny Jacobs claiming prison workers who handle most of the university’s laundry were exposed to biohazards they’re not sufficiently equipped to handle.
Martin said he and other workers were threatened with the loss of their jobs for asking not to handle marked laundry bags from wards treating coronavirus patients.
“For a while they were marking the COVID bags, and now they don't,” Martin said. “So every bag is just a bag.”
This practice appears to go against CDC guidelines that state “bags containing contaminated laundry must be clearly identified with labels, color-coding, or other methods so that health-care workers handle these items safely, regardless of whether the laundry is transported within the facility or destined for transport to an off-site laundry service.”
According to Starbuck, “Per CDC guidelines, the bags do not need to be processed any differently than standard hospital linens.” Starbuck acknowledged there were a few bags coming into the laundry facilities marked COVID-19, but that the extra labeling is not a requirement and that, “hospital internal procedures dictate how contaminated laundry is identified.”
The laundry sorting facility at Oregon State Penitentiary handles laundry for health care facilities across the state, including OHSU, Salem Hospital and PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend, the site of Lane County’s first COVID-related death on March 14.
“Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday — we sorted all that laundry,” Martin said. “Nothing marked COVID ever came through. … The only reason that we knew there was anything that had anything to do with COVID was because we watched the news.”
On its laundry services website, Oregon Corrections Enterprises claims “our Salem facility is obtaining the elite level of Healthcare Laundry Accreditation Council accreditation by 2017.”
That accreditation never happened. When OHSU inspectors asked in 2018 and 2019 whether the Salem facility was planning on becoming accredited in the next six months, the answer was “no” both times. According to Starbuck, the lack of accreditation is due to “issues with the building structure/ layout.”
It’s website also claims its laundries “are audited by our hospital customers on a quarterly basis.”
But according to OHSU, its “contractual requirements do not stipulate that OHSU will perform audits on the quarterly basis. When issues do come up, OHSU is responsible to perform a formal inspection.”
A review of OHSU inspection reports indicate inspectors consistently found the overall cleanliness of OCE’s laundry facilities in Salem “excellent,” but also showed that over the past three years, no documentation existed or was reviewed by inspectors regarding routine cleaning and disinfection, quality control issues or preventative maintenance.
Starbuck confirmed an infectious disease control team from OHSU inspected a laundry earlier this month, but did not specify which facility. When asked about specific recommendations from inspectors, she mentioned beard covers and hair nets but added, “I do not have the report so I cannot speak to all of the specifics.”
Prisoners can report their concerns through ODOC’s grievance process, but two prisoners told the Portland Mercury it will not accept grievances “related to social distancing or following the governor's orders.”
ODOC did not respond to repeated questions about restrictions on its current grievance procedures.
“As I talk to you, I'm looking at red lines on the wall,’ Martin said. “They're supposed to be every six feet — our phones are about two feet apart and there's about 15 people on the phones. Nobody's wearing a mask.”
In an online forum with members of the Association of Oregon Corrections Employees, which represents corrections officers in ODOC facilities, the union’s president, Dan Weber, responded to a question about how to stay safe during the pandemic by noting, “We are much more in danger from fellow staff than from (Adults in Custody) at this point.”
Martin said virtually none of Mill Creek’s non-medical corrections staff have been wearing masks, which is counter to current recommendations from the CDC.
“I can tell you 100% I've only seen one staff member with a mask,” Martin said. “Out of all of them.”
Reached over the phone, Weber declined to answer any questions about correctional officers’ access to PPE and directed queries to ODOC’s communications staff.
Mill Creek spokesperson Tonya Gushard said staff and prisoners had been issued masks, but did not directly address Martin’s claims or answer questions about when the masks had been issued.
“This is strictly about good business”
Oregon voters approved a constitutional amendment in 1995 requiring state prison prisoners to work or take job training for 40 hours per week and barred them from receiving compensation for their labor.
Oregon Corrections Enterprises was created to help the state’s prisons come into compliance with the requirement that all able-bodied prisoners be put to work.
The department later instituted a system that converts credits into money each month as a way to compensate them for their labor without subverting the state constitution.
According to an Oregon Corrections Enterprises internal policy paper from 2014, ODOC prisoners “are not employees.”
In 2004, the Department of Business and Consumer services determined “Prisoners working in any capacity without workers’ compensation insurance coverage are not subject to any of Oregon’s (Occupational Safety and Health Division) standards, including recordkeeping.”
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Oregon OSHA said state prisoners are covered under a "parallel workers' compensation system" administered by the Department of Administrative Services.
In 2007, Oregon’s Department of Justice sent a letter to the head of enforcement at Oregon OSHA, noting, “Our research has not identified any legal obligation to record injuries and illnesses for an entity using and directing inmate labor apart from occupational safety and health laws.”
Martin said he’s taken OSHA’s training course. “We literally have to do these tests about what the laundry is, what bloodborne pathogens are, what PPE is...we're reading this stuff while we're watching them ignore every single thing in it.”
In response to a public records request for copies of policies related to workplace health and safety requirements for prison workers in Oregon Corrections Enterprises laundry facilities, including reporting requirements for injuries and illnesses, Starbuck provided a fee estimate totaling $647 which stated, “we have determined the request is insufficient to satisfy the 'public interest' test so as to justify either a fee reduction or waiver.”
The high price of these public records prevented Street Roots from obtaining them.
Oregon Corrections Enterprises told Oregon OHSU inspectors in 2019 that documentation existed for the routine cleaning and disinfection done at its Salem facility, but Starbuck did not confirm such documentation existed when asked. “We can confirm routine cleaning and disinfection happens four times per day, twice per shift,” she said.
“Not designed for this kind of pandemic”
Even before the coronavirus pandemic hit Oregon’s prison system, internal investigations and lawsuits from the families of deceased prisoners highlighted ODOC staffing shortages, inadequate medical facilities and failures to properly protect prisoners from outbreaks of infectious diseases.
Multiple ODOC spokespersons have replied to media inquiries about the conditions in different facilities with identical language : “The reality is that prisons are not designed for this type of pandemic, especially the minimum institutions.
After an internal investigation last year into the death of Michael Barton, a prisoner whose family is currently suing ODOC for alleged negligence preceding his death, Dr. Reed Paulson, a physician for the department, told The Oregonian that Oregon’s largest prison infirmary is "extremely ill-constructed for admitting flu patients for monitoring, as we have multiple immunocompromised and/or medically frail patients at all times.”
Paulson recommended ODOC “increase RN and provider staff to appropriate levels” and replace Oregon State Penitentiary’s infirmary “with a modern prison infirmary appropriate to the numbers and acuity levels of the expected use.” ODOC did not respond to repeated inquiries about whether it had taken that action.
A year before Barton’s family sued the state, a Willamette Week investigation found ODOC failed to follow best practices and its own guidelines to vaccinate as many prisoners as possible during a particularly severe flu season in 2018.
The department eventually settled a lawsuit with the family of Tina Ferri, who died during a flu outbreak while incarcerated at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility.
ODOC says that it now schedules a flu shot for all prisoners who do not decline the shot in writing, but has not responded to requests for updated figures on how many vaccines have been purchased and administered.
Last month, ODOC announced a $60 million hole in this year’s budget, blaming rising health care costs and a lack of electronic medical records for the shortfall. To close the gap, the department instituted a hiring freeze and laid off two dozen employees in managerial and administrative positions.
The Oregon Health Authority released guidance on April 20 recommending expanded testing for “impacted populations and frontline workers,” including prisoners and staff in correctional facilities. ODOC did not respond to repeated questions on whether it intends to expand testing in light of these new guidelines.
"Everybody's trying to advocate for themselves and everybody's trying to figure out something," Martin told Street Roots before an automated message announced one minute of call time remained. "But nothing is happening."
Senior Staff Reporter Emily Green contributed to this report.
Both SCI and SCCI are on Tier 4 status, which means the entire prison population is considered quarantined for 14 days and all symptomatic patients are tested for COVID-19, with "symptom interviews" conducted daily.
Prisoners who are under quarantine and medical isolation, said ODOC spokesperson Vanessa Vanderzee, are ideally placed "in a single cell with solid walls and a solid door that closes."
Quarantine is the designation for prisoners who have had close contact with a COVID-19 and medical isolation is for prisoners who are confirmed or suspected to have COVID-19. If a prisoner in quarantine develops symptoms, they are then placed under medical isolation.
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