By Oralandar Brand-Williams
The Detroit News
LANSING — Larry Smith coughed incessantly and struggled for breath last December as he battled COVID-19.
Smith wasn’t at home or surrounded by family who could monitor him to make sure he was OK or take him to a hospital if needed. He was frightened and mostly alone at the Gus Harrison Correctional Facility in Adrian.
“It was scary. ... I was extremely scared,” said Smith, who thinks he contracted the deadly virus from an ailing, elderly prisoner he was helping as a reader.
Five months later, Smith has been freed after a 1994 murder conviction against him was dismissed following an investigation by the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office. But he’s not free from COVID’s aftereffects. He says he can’t exercise without losing his breath, and he suffers from joint aches, stomach problems and a “foggy memory.”
Smith, 45, is among the 26,433 inmates in Michigan’s prison system who have been infected with COVID-19 since the virus was detected in the state 14 months ago. COVID-19 has killed 140 state inmates and prison employees.
The state prison system’s infection rate is 64% — far above the national rate of 39% reported in U.S. prisons last month by the New York Times. The Michigan Department of Corrections reports it conducted 41,564 COVID-19 tests on inmates, giving it the nation’s highest rate among prison populations, according to a study released last month.
A Detroit News analysis of data compiled by the Times revealed infection rates in Michigan prisons as high as 88%, a figure recorded at the Carson City Correctional Facility, which had 2,118 cases of COVID-19 among inmates. The facility with the largest number of cases is the Charles Egeler Reception & Guidance Center in Jackson: 2,394 among inmates and 224 among staff, with eight deaths.
Inmates interviewed by The News said prisoner transfers and a lack of personal protective equipment led to the high case numbers. Michigan Department of Corrections officials defended their efforts to curb infections, saying they’ve improved the masks provided for inmates and made vaccinations available to all prisoners.
“They got to stop the transfers ... stop transferring people,” said Darnell Bates, 55, an inmate at the Muskegon Correctional Facility, in a phone interview. “They need to start giving us cleaning supplies. The masks they give us are inadequate. It’s a bedsheet with strings. We need better masks, bleach and cleaning supplies.”
Every prisoner has been given at least a half-dozen masks and can get new ones whenever they need them, said Department of Corrections spokesman Chris Gautz.
“All they have to do is ask,” he said. “The original masks we gave out were 100% cotton. The masks we make now are broadcloth material — 65% cotton/35% poly material.”
As for inmate transfers, Gautz admitted they contribute to the large number of cases at the Egeler facility, which receives every new male prisoner from the state’s county jails, plus parole violators.
“So there is a lot of movement of people coming in, which is why they have had more prisoners to test and have had more positives than any other facility. Most all of our other prisons, their population is largely static, except for those leaving on parole,” Gautz said. “Egeler is always getting in new prisoners.”
Asked about the infection rate at Carson City, Gautz replied: “There’s nothing that’s special about Carson City’s rate. Like a lot of facilities, over the past 14 months a number of their prisoners have at one time tested positive.”
MDOC began offering vaccinations for inmates Jan. 27, said Gautz, and 59% are fully vaccinated after receiving doses made by Moderna or Johnson & Johnson. “All prisoners have been offered the vaccine,” he said.
State prison officials have been given varied reasons why some inmates have opted out of taking the vaccine.
“The majority who said no feel like the vaccine would harm them,” Gautz said. “Others think they don’t need it because they have already had COVID, while others have said their family called and told them not to get it; others say they don’t trust the government or have declined due to religious reasons.”
Bates, who is serving a life sentence for murder, said he decided to get vaccinated after contracting COVID-19 in November and losing his senses of taste and smell. He received the Moderna vaccine in March.
“The environment we’re living in ... I’d be a fool not to,” he said. “When the pandemic first happened, so many people caught the COVID. So many ambulances were coming in every day picking people up. Some inmates died, so I was glad to get the shot.”
Jerome Hale, 47, an inmate at the Gus Harrison Correctional Facility who’s serving a life term for murder, caught COVID-19 the month before Smith. Now recovered and vaccinated, he hasn’t forgotten his hellish experience with the novel coronavirus.
“Ever since I had it, my stomach is never settled,” he said in a phone interview. “I can’t hold anything down in my stomach.”
Like Bates, Hale said he hopes prison officials will get more bleach and different types of masks to prisoners.
MDOC officials faced a new threat in February when an outbreak of 90 cases of the highly contagious B.1.1.7. variant was found at the Bellamy Creek Correctional Facility in Ionia County, believed to be the largest cluster in the country. Overall, there are 517 cases of the variant within the Michigan Department of Corrections.
“The department and the staff at Bellamy Creek Correctional Facility moved swiftly, along with key assistance and support from MDHHS, to quarantine prisoners, change staff movements, began testing every employee and prisoner every day, required staff to be in full PPE suits and N-95 masks at all times, etc,” Gautz said. “These actions kept the far more contagious variant from spreading further into the facility or further into the community.
“Several prisoners from Bellamy had been transferred to two other prisons before the department learned of the variant and because of the quick measures implemented, and the general safety protocols already in place, there was no spread of the contagious variant at either of the other two sites.”
Last month, a national group hailed Michigan, Colorado, Connecticut and Vermont as the states doing the most COVID-19 testing among inmates, which it cited as a factor in low infection rates. According to the study from the National Commission on COVID-19 and Criminal Justice, Michigan had the highest inmate testing rate (14,378 tests per 1,000 inmates).
In December, the Massachusetts-based Prison Policy Initiative, a prison watchdog organization, urged Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to “step in heavy-handedly” to compel MDOC to free more “super” vulnerable inmates who are incarcerated for “low-level” crimes.
“The spread is so high because prisons and jails are areas where you can’t simply socially distance,” said Wanda Bertram of the Prison Policy Initiative. “You can’t practice good hygiene in the same way you can if you’re outside of prison.”
Despite the availability of vaccines and frequent testing, relatives of Michigan inmates fear for their loved ones.
Denise Brooks, whose son, Michael, is in Gus Harrison, said every day is one of constant worry and anxiety.
“Everybody is scared there,” she said. “Some guards won’t enforce the mask rules. It bothers me. It scares him. It’s really bothering his wife. I just tell him he’s going to be out of there one day.”
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