Collected Item: “COVID-19 Inside Arkansas Prisons: The Past and Future”
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COVID-19 Inside Arkansas Prisons: The Past and Future
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article
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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.
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.
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CumminsUnit, ArkansasRegionalUnit, GrimesUnit, PineBluff, Brickeys, Newport, incarceration, prison, covid, testing
Enter a URL associated with this object, if relevant.
https://www.ualrpublicradio.org/post/covid-19-inside-arkansas-prisons-virus-spreads-through-inmate-populations-and-staff
Who originally created this object? (If you created this object, such as photo, then put "self" here.)
Anna Stitt
Give this story a date.
2020-06-10