The low-security federal prison in Oakdale, La., 200 miles west of New Orleans, has emerged as a focal point of the coronavirus pandemic inside the nation’s lockups. Five prisoners have died there from the disease, the most of any federal prison, reports the Wall Street Journal. At least 25 inmates and 21 workers have tested positive, including seven prisoners who are in intensive care and four on ventilators; two employees are hospitalized. Interviews with inmates and family members, corrections officers and local officials show a prison under siege. Cells holding six men each, feverish, coughing inmates weren’t separated from healthy cellmates, lying in bunks an arm’s length away. Some fashioned masks from their own clothing. Inmates can hear coughing throughout the halls every night. “Our sentences have turned into death sentences,” says Sterling Rivers, 32, serving time for a drug conspiracy conviction.
The crisis at Oakdale foreshadows what has started to play out at other jails and prisons across the U.S., where health experts warn that cramped quarters and often unhygienic living conditions give contagion free rein. The federal Bureau of Prisons, criticized by staff and inmates as slow to respond, said it has been implementing a plan to stem the spread. On April 1, officials took the rare step of imposing a nationwide policy of keeping inmates in their cells all day with very limited exceptions. At Oakdale, a team of eight medical workers arrived March 31. They began handing out paper masks to some inmates, and last week started regularly checking temperatures, something officials said is now being done nationally to spot sick inmates sooner. A lawsuit filed against the Trump administration on behalf of four federal corrections employees demands hazardous pay for being exposed to the virus while at work. Three-quarters of the 980 Oakdale inmates are quarantined.