Isabel Seliger
Antoine Davis has been incarcerated in Washington state for 15 years—long enough to remember a time before Covid, when the Washington Corrections Center offered classes on writing, health and fitness, and peer-to-peer self betterment programs. “It was these programs that really helped my physical and mental wellbeing, while residing with a prison sentence that is immensely difficult to live with,” says Davis, 36, who is facing another four decades behind bars.
Incarcerated Americans were particularly affected by Covid. According to one 2020 study, 3,251 of every 100,000 people in US prisons and jails contracted the virus that spring—more than five times the national rate—even as prisons locked down and for a time ended all family visits, recreational opportunities, religious services, and prison programming. “I remember the silent fear that many of us had as everything was being canceled. It felt like the cell walls became smaller,” recalls Eric Paris Whiteman, who is incarcerated at New York’s Eastern Correctional Facility.
According to a study in the journal Health & Justice, 86 percent of corrections agencies acknowledged reduced programming during Covid. “When Covid restrictions were lifted, I thought we’d get the programs back,” says Davis. But, giving voice to a widespread complaint among prisoners and educational advocates, he says “that couldn’t have been further from the truth. Instead of DOC working during Covid to figure out ways to reinstate these important programs and educational opportunities, they were working on ways to box out anyone from reentering the prison once normal operation resumed, leaving prisoners with watered down programming opportunities.”
Chris Wright, press secretary for the Washington Department of Corrections, acknowledges that since Covid, low staffing levels and a shortage of volunteers have prevented classes from taking place. “There were about 7,000” volunteer instructors, he explains, “prior to Covid and that number has dropped to roughly 1,500,” following a new security screening process. The state also put new restrictions on unsupervised peer-to-peer groups—programming that required leadership of incarcerated people and the participation of sponsors from the outside community. Prior to the pandemic, community volunteers from HEAL, a restorative justice group, ran three accountability and trauma circles at Washington State Reformatory. And while a recent change in personnel at headquarters has resulted in the slow readmittance of some community-run organizations, HEAL is still working to return.
The situation in Washington is just one example of what could be described as another kind of long Covid: how the aftermath of pandemic cuts have lingered across United States prisons. While advocates report some states’ prison programming has returned to pre-pandemic levels, other states have not seen volunteers or educators who led classes return. While Maria Bivens, a spokesperson for Pennsylvania’s department of corrections, insists its programs have been “gradually reinstated” with “no cuts,” Su Ming Yeh, executive director of the Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project, reports that many “programs have not restarted” there. In New Jersey, Bonnie Kerness, who directs American Friends Service Committee’s Prison Watch, says groups offering programming have had trouble reentering its state prisons. Dana Anderson helps run Shakespeare Corrected, which before the pandemic brought the playwright’s work to women’s prisons in Illinois, but which, in the wake of the worst days of the pandemic, has struggled to get authorization to reenter all but one minimum security facility. “The long lasting effect is that a lot of places that were providing these programs never came back because it was so hard to get back in,” she says. “There are less opportunities.”
“Covid wasn’t a single event,” says Lois Davis, a specialist in prison education programs and the co-author of a RAND Corporation study that documented how prisons’ responses to the pandemic lowered the quality of programming, as they offered fewer courses in vocational, basic, and secondary education.
Another related lingering effect of the pandemic has been an enduring shortage of corrections officers; one study of 31 prison systems found staff decreased by 17 percent between 2020 and 2021. While lockdowns to prevent Covid transmission have faded, the staff shortfall has made them more likely for other reasons. It also is playing a role in staunching the return of programming—and undercutting the frequency of classes that are scheduled to take place.
“Correctional officers are really key to helping ensure that face to face education work,” says Davis, because they must typically supervise and escort participants from cell blocks. Cancellations of scheduled classes due to staff shortages are “quite devastating,” says James Soto, who was incarcerated during the pandemic and now works at the Illinois based Prison and Neighborhood Arts/Education Project. “It’s a time that you could be physically out of the cell and into a place where you’re not only learning but you are able to express ideas and your thoughts and critically think…not having it really put a void to our life.”
”Just like any disruption in life impacts us out here, in there it’s an even more profound impact because they have so little else in terms of learning and growing and distractions from the awfulness in their surroundings,” says Kerness.
Covid restrictions did prompt some prisons to become more open to technology, and provide new access to video calls and online courses. “We have seen huge technological leaps with new virtual access for incarcerated people,” acknowledges Chloe Aquart of the Vera Institute. In Washington state, incarcerated people can’t use the world wide web, but, since Covid, have been allowed to send messages and download content across wifi on tablets owned by Securus, a prison communications company that’s been criticized for predatory pricing. Under the 2022 bipartisan infrastructure act, $2.75 billion was designated for grant programs to promote digital equity and inclusion; a handful of states used the funds to expand digital access for prisoners.
But Ruth Delaney, a Vera staffer who works to expand prisoners’ access to higher education, says technology can’t displace the importance of in-person programming. “For the most part we have seen a shift back to face to face learning,” she says, as research has shown that learning “classroom norms—like how to have a debate without taking things personally, how to talk about ideas…really cultivate and support transferable skills that are going to help you in the future.”
During its most intense stretches, the pandemic upended how Americans shop, play, learn, work, and communicate. And in the time since, the changes wrought by the pandemic have allowed some to construct new, more enriching ways to live. Prisoners, of course, didn’t get that chance.
Indeed, the lingering gaps in programing suggest to Alexandra Morgan-Kurtz, also of the Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project, that prisons reason they “survived the lockdowns by providing limited services,” and have learned a dark lesson from the experience:
“‘We made it through it without massive riots, so why expend the extra time and resources?’”
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