The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
At state’s prison for women, a struggle for survival
Jamira Myers, a 37-year old mother of four from New Haven, has been at York Correctional Institution since November 2019 for accessory to larceny in the third degree (she says a friend’s son took her car and committed a crime).
Myers has applied for compassionate release, and she’s been turned down, despite a September letter from a UConn Health doctor that said Myer’s health problems include a herniated disc and a deteriorating tailbone, and that she needs surgery as soon as possible, or she won’t be able to walk again, ever.
“She needs,” the letter said, “immediate care.” Because the pandemic has put surgeries on hold, the letter said, “Ms. Myers’ only solution is to take reasonable measures to get the surgery she needs by the quickest means possible, to allow her a fighting chance of being able to tend her physical conditions.”
In additional to debilitating back problems, Myers has asthma and anxiety, and her weight has ballooned to nearly 400 pounds. She uses a wheelchair — which advocates say it took her a year to get in prison.
She also tested positive for COVID. She spent Christmas in the prison medical unit, she said, where advocates say a correction officer assaulted her, and where she contracted a MRSA infection.
“It’s tough,” said Myers in a phone call from. York. “I’m getting so big from not being mobile, and I’m having constant chest pain.” She said when she seeks medical attention, she said she is given Tylenol, which isn’t nearly strong enough to address her deteriorating back.
According to the latest figures from the state Department of Correction, York has had 242 inmates test positive since the pandemic started. Inmates are particularly vulnerable to COVID, given their inability to socially distance, says The Marshall Project, which has been tracking the coronavirus in prison. Nationwide, cases in prisons and jails first peaked in April and again in midDecember, according to the project. As of December, one in five inmates had tested positive for COVID – four times higher than the rest of the population, says the project.
As with the rest of the population, the inmate population’s safety during the pandemic varies widely depending on where they are. Inmates in Massachusetts have already begun to be inoculated. Other states – among them California – have taken steps to reduce prison population and reducing
bail for misdemeanor offenses.
A 57-year old man who’d been imprisoned at MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution died of COVID complications recently, bringing the death toll among Connecticut’s prisons to 18. Inmates are supposed to be in the current phase – 1B – of vaccinations, but as for specifics, the state’s website says only that people who live in congregate settings (halfway houses, homeless shelters, prisons) “will be phased in throughout Phase 1B.” A recent memo to correction department employees said staff members can expect to be vaccinated within the next few
weeks.
The lack of attention to inmates during the pandemic is not unexpected, Myers said. She tells stories of abuse – name-calling among the least of it – that are corroborated by other women who’ve been in York. Last month, the state paid the family of Tianna Laboy $250,000 after Laboy gave birth in a prison toilet while incarcerated at York in 2018. The state did not admit liability. Some women who were formerly incarcerated in York and their families started a Facebook page, “We Survived That.”
“It’s very powerful to have a space where everyone in this group knows what you went through to
a degree,” sad LaToya Willis, intake coordinator at the Connecticut Bail Fund who between 2006 and 2009 was an inmate at York. Willis said making sure inmates are safe inside the correctional system relies on a flawed system. Reporting abuse to staff means working through staff, whose members might be less loyal to inmates’ safety, and more loyal to one other.
“When you go to tell someone, you have to tell another officer, who then takes your statement,” said Willis. “There’s a tier you need to go through. Who are you going to tell without fear of retaliation?”
Willis said she remembers the day she was sent to York.
“I’m shackled, sitting on that bus on my way to Niantic,” she said. “I got up that morning, got dressed, and went to court knowing I was going to jail. Then on the bus, you have women who look like high-class women, looking scared. You have women who are sick off of drugs.
“The bus was going down 91, and next to us was a little girl in the back seat of a Jeep. She had to be 9 years old, mouthing the words as she read the side of the bus. As her mouth moved, I realized I was on my way to prison. I’m looking at her thinking, ‘I pray to God she never ends up on this bus.’”
Supporters started a petition to allow Myers to be freed to get the medical attention she needs. That could be, from the petition, a compassionate release, a furlough, a reprieve, or a sentence modification. Myers is desperate enough that in December, she wrote to Gov. Ned Lamont. The letter said, in part: “I’m begging you from the bottom of my heart, I don’t want to die here.”
Susan Campbell is the author of "Frog Hollow: Stories From an American Neighborhood," "Tempest-Tossed: The Spirit of Isabella Beecher Hooker," and "Dating Jesus: A Story of Fundamentalism, Feminism, and the American Girl." She also writes at susancampbell.substack.com.