A troubling response

Something always seemed understandable but uncomfortable about the way Arkansas talked about coronavirus infections in its prisons.

We implied that there were cases that counted and cases that didn’t. We implied that there were people who counted and people who didn’t.

A day’s count of new infections could be mitigated if some of those infected were in prisons. There was the daily report including prison numbers, and then there was the daily report we liked, meaning the one not including prison numbers.

Prison infections were, by definition, contained, thus different. They were not a threat to the general population. They were not so worrisome.

It was delicate rhetorical threading. Gov. Asa Hutchinson earned a wince when he complained that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had not yet tested at a federal prison in the state where cases had arisen. In his frustration, he said that, at the very least, prison employees should have been tested already.

He did not mean, I’m sure, that a prison guard’s life or health mattered more than an inmate’s. He meant that the employee’s status was a matter of more concern in the context of the virus spreading in the community to which the employee returned.

The prisoner might spread his illness merely to other prisoners.

And there I’ve produced my own wince.

It turns out that no less than The New Yorker magazine took an interest in virus-infected inmates at the Cummins Unit of the Arkansas prison system.

The legendary magazine published a lengthy presumed exposé last week on tense and abusive incidents in that prison as coronavirus infections exploded. These reported events were described in the article as taking place even as Hutchinson and his prison director were saying all the right things publicly about the separation of the infected from the uninfected, and the medical care provided in the fortuitously contained environment.

The article asserts that the separation was uneven and late. It asserts that social distancing was flouted. It asserts that usual practices were adhered to even after cases arose, mainly to keep the inmates from restlessness. It asserts that a prisoner uprising over inadequate care was more problematic than the governor and prison officials said.

And it explores generally the less than pristine nature of the prison culture. Inmates work fields without even the nominal pay common in many states. Function and order still are maintained through an ill-defined overlapping relationship between officials and inmates.

Hutchinson’s reaction troubles as thoroughly as the article.

The governor seems to see the piece as a public relations problem rather than a human one. He seems to resent that The New Yorker came to the state looking, as he put it, for 1960s-style penal corruption.

He took offense that the magazine never asked him or his office for reaction or comment and referred only sparingly to written answers prison officials submitted to 60 questions. He said the article seemed to be “what The New Yorker does,” by which he apparently meant something other than what The New Yorker has long done, which is legendary magazine work.

After publicly alleging inaccuracies in the article, Hutchinson was asked to cite some of those inaccuracies. He didn’t.

He said he’d be happy to go over the 60 answers submitted by prison officials to demonstrate that the article didn’t bother relating all of them.

That’s not inaccuracy. It’s journalism. It’s editing.

If you are ever interviewed by a journalist, be aware that the journalist likely will not publish every word you say. He will choose what to quote and what to leave out. You may not like his judgment. You may think it unfair.

But it is not inaccuracy to find some comments relevant and others not.

Hutchinson’s reaction stands in stark contrast to that of a reader in an email to me in midweek. The reader wrote, “Places like Cummins are the worst kind of time machine. It’s a plantation operating on unpaid, and, historically, entirely black labor. The class/racial dynamics enforced there both tacitly and overtly are pretty much the pole on which people hoist a Confederate flag. If we are to move beyond that shameful legacy, institutions such as Cummins need to be brought into the light of everyday discourse.”

What Arkansas needs to ask itself is it if really cares what happened amid the raging virus behind those heavy locks at Cummins.

The right answer would have the governor and legislative committees beginning reviews to get to the bottom of what The New Yorker’s article asserts. It would have the governor saying none of what that article asserts should have happened and, if any of it happened, it cannot happen again.

Inevitably, and as usual, the best public relations move would be to do the right thing.

Resenting something from New York … that’s provincial, silly, geographically prejudiced, and not remotely a substantive response.