NC Prisons COVID Practices a Ruse Among Overcrowding

Revolutionary greetings!

The North Carolina Department of Public Safety (DPS) Division of Adult Correction is hard at work exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic to further oppress disadvantaged people. Its first big moves were elimination of visitation and Christian religious services. Then, concerned about overcrowding (which DPS has previously denied) and lack of social distancing, a judge requested DPS to tell the court how its acting to keep prisoners in different pods, dorms and units apart. Then things really got crazy.

After weeks of foolish experiments in the overcrowded dining hall, Greene Correctional Institution stopped letting us eat there at all. All meals are now served on styrofoam takeout trays. The pigs have less “work” to do. The partial lockdown didn’t stop there, though.

The yards are now closed about 19 hours/day. Yard time is the only opportunity we have for distanced socializing. Now its limited to less than 1.5 hours/day for each dorm, two or three dorms at a time. The rest of the day we’re locked up in concrete tombs, suffering from vitamin D deficiencies. Lack of fresh air and vitamin D is compromising our immune systems, increasing our risk of dying of COVID-19.

Disingenuous DPS paperwork has placated courts, which have never been known for integrity or common sense. Any reported isolation is a crude ruse effective only when someone chooses to believe it and ignore the evidence. Despite published rules, prisoners float from dorm to dorm, tattooing each other, buying, selling and taking drugs, bartering and trading medical supplies and contraband, gambling, and extorting weaker, elderly, infirm and handicapped prisoners. Guards pretend not to notice the crowds in the dayrooms, bathrooms and showers.

DPS has now “resumed” (it never really stopped) shipping victims between prisons. New arrivals come straight to regular population. They are not quarantined.

Guards and another non-resident personnel come and go. They are not tested. By now, its a near certainty that some of them carry SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

We who are about to die salute you.