Voices from a Prison Pandemic: Lives Lost from COVID-19 at Lakeland Correctional
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2022
Abstract
Coronavirus tore through jails and prisons like wildfire. In some states, more than half of the people incarcerated there tested positive for COVID-19; nearly 400,000 people in prison across the United States have tested positive. For people in prison, COVID-19 brought the loss of close friends, solitary confinement, loss of connection with family and programming, lack of information, and fear of contracting the virus. It has also reminded those who are incarcerated of the one-dimensional way in which people in prison are perceived. As stated by one collaborator, Cory Souders, “[s]o many men and women who come to prison are identified by the crime they committed. In my eyes, many on the outside have forgotten the fact that we are still human.”
Before society’s collective consciousness fades, the authors of this Commentary seek to document the experience of the coronavirus from inside the prison walls and to remember of the lives of the men who died from COVID-19 inside one prison, Lakeland Correctional Facility, a 1,400-person state prison in rural Michigan where coronavirus hit early and hard.
Recommended Citation
Thomas, Kimberly, "Voices from a Prison Pandemic: Lives Lost from COVID-19 at Lakeland Correctional" (2022). Public Law & Legal Theory Working Papers. 139.
https://repository.law.umich.edu/pub_law_archive/139