Item
COVID-19 Inside Arkansas Prisons: The Past and Future
Title (Dublin Core)
COVID-19 Inside Arkansas Prisons: The Past and Future
Description (Dublin Core)
The covid pandemic has shown the world, especially the US, how suceptible certain populaations are to any communicable disease. The virus has hit hard in places where social distancing is at best difficult. Places like elder care facilities, meat packing plants, and prisons.
In the final installment of her three part series, covering covid inside Arkansas State prisons, NPR reporter Anna Stitt, looks at the history and future of the Arkansas prison system. Much of her focus has been on the Cummins Unit. A prison opened in 1902 and named after one of the plantations who formerly owned the land. Upon opening and through present day the prison operates a farm that is worked by inmates for no pay. They were still farming cotton, with guards on horseback, holding rifles, in the 1990's. An image that looks like it could have been taken one hundred years ago. This prison has been part of numerous scandals and appears to be in the midst of one today. When the NAACP Legal Defense Fund sued to gain early release for the medically vulnerable the judge denied the request saying there wasn't sufficient proof that the Corrections Department was mishandling the pandemic. Inmates report being denied testing even once exposed to the virus. When inmates attourney's requested security footage the Department of Corrections filed a motion to block the request but the judge allowed the attorney's to see the footage.
The treatment of inmates has resulted in their families and friends staging a protest outside the Arkansas Governor's Mansion on May 16th and a coalition of organizations delivering demands to the governor on June 1st.
HST580, ASU
In the final installment of her three part series, covering covid inside Arkansas State prisons, NPR reporter Anna Stitt, looks at the history and future of the Arkansas prison system. Much of her focus has been on the Cummins Unit. A prison opened in 1902 and named after one of the plantations who formerly owned the land. Upon opening and through present day the prison operates a farm that is worked by inmates for no pay. They were still farming cotton, with guards on horseback, holding rifles, in the 1990's. An image that looks like it could have been taken one hundred years ago. This prison has been part of numerous scandals and appears to be in the midst of one today. When the NAACP Legal Defense Fund sued to gain early release for the medically vulnerable the judge denied the request saying there wasn't sufficient proof that the Corrections Department was mishandling the pandemic. Inmates report being denied testing even once exposed to the virus. When inmates attourney's requested security footage the Department of Corrections filed a motion to block the request but the judge allowed the attorney's to see the footage.
The treatment of inmates has resulted in their families and friends staging a protest outside the Arkansas Governor's Mansion on May 16th and a coalition of organizations delivering demands to the governor on June 1st.
HST580, ASU
CumminsUnit, ArkansasRegionalUnit, GrimesUnit, PineBluff, Brickeys, Newport, incarceration, prison, covid, testing
HST 580
Date (Dublin Core)
June 10, 2020
Creator (Dublin Core)
Anna Stitt
Contributor (Dublin Core)
Chris Twing
Event Identifier (Dublin Core)
HST580
Partner (Dublin Core)
Arizona State University
Type (Dublin Core)
article
Link (Bibliographic Ontology)
Publisher (Dublin Core)
Controlled Vocabulary (Dublin Core)
English
Government State
English
Social Distance
Curator's Tags (Omeka Classic)
Cummins
Arkansas
history
prison
NAACP
protest
Collection (Dublin Core)
Incarceration
Deathways
Linked Data (Dublin Core)
Date Submitted (Dublin Core)
06/13/2020
Date Modified (Dublin Core)
06/19/2020
1/26/2021
08/02/2022
10/13/2024
Date Created (Dublin Core)
06/10/2020
Linked resources
Filter by property
| Title | Alternate label | Class |
|---|---|---|
 COVID-19 Inside Arkansas Prisons: Virus Spreads Through Inmate Populations and Staff |
Linked Data | Interactive Resource |
 COVID-19 Inside Arkansas Prisons: The Death of Derick Coley |
Linked Data | Interactive Resource |
 COVID-19 Inside Arkansas Prisons: The Past and Future |
Linked Data | Interactive Resource |
This item was submitted on June 13, 2020 by Chris Twing using the form “Share Your Story” on the site “A Journal of the Plague Year”: http://covid-19archive.org/s/archive
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