“I’ve never been so sick in all my life. Everyone on this dorm is deathly ill … It all went downhill when they started putting positive cases back in the room with negative cases … I was just told I was positive and left in my room. With negative people. They are putting us all in danger at this point, including their officers.”
“We get no medical attention whatsoever! They do not check on us, do not do temp checks, stopped giving Tylenol … An older lady covered from head to toe with rash, her ears are swollen bad. They won’t get her help.”
“In the beginning, I used to flippantly say that when the COVID finally comes here, the prison will just let us all get sick and die. I thought that I was just being dramatic, but it might have been more prescient than I know…. Why don’t OUR lives matter?”
Each of these alarming messages are from women incarcerated in Rockville prison, Indiana’s largest women’s prison. There is a crisis in the prison as women are going undernourished, without treatment or isolation, and with hundreds sick. Despite eight months to prepare, Rockville did not do so, and is woefully underprepared for this crisis. They have now essentially abandoned these women to the virus.
Please call, tweet, or email the governor before his staff go on leave for the holidays.
phone: 317-232-4567
tweet: @GovHolcomb
email: https://www.in.gov/gov/governor-holcombask-eric/
Demand they must:
-
Test everyone in the prison
-
Isolate those who are sick and quarantine those who have contacted an infectious person
-
If they don’t have they space to isolate/quarantine individuals, they must release the over 200 women who would be released in the next six month, and transfer other women, until they do have the room
-
Provide appropriate treatment and nourishment to those who are sick