We received this from a woman caged at Indiana Womens Prison, which is currently on lockdown due to an outbreak of Covid-19
09/30/2020
I want to share with you in case an audience exists that cares about these matters.
Certain incarcerated persons require 24 hour care. They require help bathing, using their excretory systems, cleaning themselves, seeing, walking, etc. Other incarcerated people are mandated to fulfill these requirements through a job assignment process. These AMA’s are not trained, certified, and probably violate the HIPPA rights of the incarcerated person they are helping. Exploitation of financial transactions has been a common outfit against the special needs patients by their AMA’s. Biohazard waste and disposal has not been an identified issue for over a year, with waste handled by AMA’s without special training or precautions.
The special need’s unit requires shifts of these workers, “AMA’s,” to cover the needs. The AMA’s have been assigned to unit 10 from units 5 and 12. Last week, unit 5 had positive cases of coronavirus in the women there. They have since been disallowed to leave their unit. Unit 10 women began to get sick 5 days ago. In those 5 days, the AMA workers from 12 have attended to them, not nurses or paid professionals with health insurance and options for care. Yesterday, while on their daily shift, one of the women was confirmed positive. Now, they refuse to offer coronavirus testing to her personal, mandated, AMA. The AMA is asthmatic. She lives on state pay so she earns $23 a month. She can’t even afford the $7 alka-seltzer sold on commissary after she buys hygiene items. Her pleas to be tested have been met with the response “no testing.” No women here are tested after having been exposed to the virus by mandated ill-compensated work. The spreading of the virus cannot be a real concern as no contact tracing or testing is done! Women are locked in cells with the virus with no showers or care.
The special needs incarcerated woman has no one to clean her feces off of her now. No nurse will care for her. She will be locked in a cell, maybe checked on at count times when it is necessary her body is counted as alive. Getting to and from the bathroom will be impossible for her without help, so hopefully she will be placed in segregation with a toilet.
“Locking down.” This is the only response and one that gives an illusion that safety of the people inside matters. However, no testing is done, no care of patients capable of voicing their needs, and definitely no care of the most vulnerable populations inside.
The c/o’s police all units of sick and non sick, potentially exposing themselves and each of the units.
If the NFL can test the league every day, why wouldn’t congregate settings and the people employed in them be tested. Why does my friend, the AMA, have to wait until she has potentially infected others on this unit, and feels bad herself, to receive coronavirus testing? Keep in mind, she only knows her patient whom she has cared for all week has tested positive by informal means…no authority even oversees her safety or cares for her exposure caused by a system that requires almost free incarcerated labor to care for the bodies inside. Violations of law occur daily by the forced care given by incarcerated workers to other incarcerated women, but these violations of law are okay, so we see. These violations of law are to benefit the State and its apparatus, so it is justified. The underlying reasons for our incarceration and violations of law are not justified because we are individuals and not a system without a face or accountability.
The only people allowed to leave their cells are those required to do the work that must be done that staff won’t do.
Special needs prisoners are often mistreated and neglected in IDOC custody