Treat people in prison with humanity

George Floyd cried for his mother as he was dying, in very much the same way that a helpless child screams out for the protection of their parents.

After days of protests and damage to public and private property, the officers involved were finally charged. His death has outraged people of all colors in all parts of the world in record numbers.

And all this during a pandemic.

But the truth is, we found out about the death of Floyd in the same way we found out about the deaths of Walter Scott, Michael Brown, Eric Garner and countless others who have been reduced to hashtags on social media feeds: because of the bravery of passersby who recorded some aspect of their policeinvolved killing, then made it public.

What about places in the United States where people can't have cellphone cameras and the statesponsored violence against Black people is often ignored or never revealed to the public? This happens in prisons all the time.

If there is one lesson I learned from my own experience of incarceration, it is that where there is little visibility, there is little accountability. Prison is the least visible institution in America.

I spent 13 years in prison, three of which were in solitary confinement. There were times when I feared being killed by the same guards who had sworn to protect me. Being a Black person in America is to live in constant fear of being killed at the hands of police officers. For incarcerated people, that fear is exponentially higher. The incarcerated live in constant fear and know that the facts behind their mistreatment will likely never see the light of day. To make things worse, society often doesn't believe incarcerated people when they say they've been harmed. As a nation, we have granted ourselves permission to look away from the truth. Yet all too often, we believe inmates when they are forced to make false confessions.

The real danger permeates every crevice of our shared society: racism in all its flavors, including structural, economic and institutional.

The brutality shown in encounters like the one that killed Floyd is not necessarily about flawed policing. Police brutality is fruit from a more poisonous and morally deficient tree that has been watered by racism and a disregard for Black life for 400 years.

Today, we relive the past by allowing the most vulnerable, the most marginalized among us to be exploited. We leave inmates at risk of death, whether through neglect or ignorance. Devastatingly, departments of corrections across the USA frequently respond to conflict between guards and inmates with the punishment of solitary and not with care — in direct opposition of medical professional’s recommendations not to use solitary as a containment strategy.

All fears are worse in prison, including the worry about getting struck down by a pandemic. In U.S. prisons and jails, more than 150,000 people have been infected with the coronavirus, and at least 980 inmates and correctional officers have died, according to a New York Times database.

When the spread of COVID-19 called for social distancing in society, corrections departments were tasked to move fast to socially distance incarcerated people in an environment architecturally designed for the opposite.

The logical solution would have been to quickly release nonviolent offenders and the most vulnerable population groups such as the sick and the elderly. Correctional leaders have responded instead with what a United Nations special rapporteur on torture once called torturous punishment. A recent special report by the Unlock the Box Campaign, a national effort to end the use of solitary confinement, reported a 500% increase in the use of solitary confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic.

As a nation, Americans have decided that incarcerated people are disposable. Because we transgressed against society, we now have less of a right to live with as much respect and humanity as everyone else. Never is this clearer than in times of societal uncertainty. Some inmates, for example, were left essentially to drown during Hurricane Katrina.

Our leaders have lacked the political courage to pass legislation that protects incarcerated people. Instead, many have exploited forced prison labor.

If we are to arrive at a place of true inclusion of every community in our society, we must practice the values of acceptance, forgiveness and equality in all our interactions.

And that must include the community harmed by the machine that is mass incarceration.

Where there is little visibility, there is little accountability.