Reporting from Arizona State Prison Complex, East Unit, Florence, Ariz.
Approximately 780 prisoners are housed here in quonset huts. Each houses 11 prisoners in cubicles about seven feet by eight feet, with a three-foot high wall. Beds are about five feet apart. We share one bathroom with one toilet and one sink.
Right now there are two free calls a week and the phones are about two feet apart. Only about 10 work currently. Needless to say it gets very crowded, no physical distancing occurs at all, and approximately 10 to 30 prisoners utilize each phone for 15-minute calls back to back. It’s a COVID-19 hot spot.
There is allowed all sports, basketball, baseball, horseshoes and card games also poker games. Church services still occur. Only visits have been taken.
The place where we all eat three meals a day is another COVID-19 hot spot. When the chow hall is open all prisoners head to a long line to eat; no physical distancing occurs. When seated at a six-man table, with seating of three on each side, we are elbow to elbow and only three feet across from one another.
The store line is another hot spot. We are forced to wait in an area fenced in, about 10 to 15 prisoners cram in the area to get their store and commissary ordered. And the spending limit has been increased for all prisoners, encouraging prisoners, like the phones, to partake in the “incentive” when it is placing us at risk.
Most correctional officers wear masks; some don’t. Hand soap is available but not consistently. Hand sanitizer stations were installed but never refilled once out of sanitizer.
Do I feel safe? Absolutely not. I bleach the phone before use, do not go to the chow hall and wait until last call for the store.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Here are our ground rules:
- You must credit Prison Journalism Project. In the byline, we prefer “[Author Name], Prison Journalism Project.” At the top of the text of your story, please include a line that says: “This story was originally published by Prison Journalism Project” and include a link to the article.
- No republishing of photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission. Please contact inquiries@prisonjournalismproject.org.
- No editing the content, including the headline, except to reflect changes in time, location and editorial style. For example, changing, “today” to “last week,” or San Quentin to San Quentin, California. You can also make minor revisions for style or headline size, and you can trim stories for space. You must also retain all original hyperlinks, including links to the Prison Journalism Project newsletters.
- No translation of our stories into another language without specific permission. Please contact inquiries@prisonjournalismproject.org.
- No selling ads against our stories, but you can publish it on a page with ads that you’ve already sold.
- No reselling or syndicating our stories, including on platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. You also can’t republish our work automatically or all at once. Please select them individually.
- No scraping our website or using our stories to populate websites designed to improve search rankings or gain revenue from network-based advertisements.
- Any site our stories appear on must have a prominent and effective way to contact you.
- If we send you a request to remove our story, you must do so immediately.
- If you share republished stories on social media, please tag Prison Journalism Project. We have official accounts on Twitter (@prisonjourn), Facebook (@prisonjournalism), Instagram (@prisonjournalism) and Linked In.
- Let us know when you share the story. Send us a note, so we can keep track.