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Finally had a chance to unpack a fundamental part of the COVID-19 prison problem, which has been gnawing at me for a long time. Read on. 1/ https://www.hadaraviram.com/2020/11/18/covid-19-prevention-in-prisons-and-the-problem-of-buy-in/
What triggered this line of thought was @BrendonWoodsPD's well-intended idea that "incarcerated people should be amongst the first to get a safe vaccine." My gut reaction was--if I were incarcerated, why would I believe any vaccine CDCR was peddling was safe? 2/
For that matter, why would I believe anyone from CDCR/CCHCS offering me *any* treatment, PPE, quarantine space, transfers, whatever, except a ticket out of the system? And why on earth would I want to cooperate with anything short of being released? 3/
I’m not in medicine/public health, but seems obvious that the success of a public health response depends on engendering public buy-in--building consensus, solidarity btwn high-risk and low-risk folks, etc etc. 4/
[BTW, we see what happens on the national level when the government not only fails to foster buy-in, but actively sabotages compliance by stoking division and misinformation. The Biden COVID-19 czar has their work cut out for them.] 5/
The CDCR COVID-19 problem is a crystallized example of understandable lack of buy-in--there's deep mistrust of prison authorities in general, and prison healthcare in particular, which have profoundly painful historical roots. 6/ https://repository.uchastings.edu/faculty_scholarship/1359/
Recall that, until recently, nonconsensual sterilization was rife in CDCR facilities. 7/ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/30/california-prisons-forced-sterilizations-belly-beast#:~:text=California%20banned%20coerced%20sterilizations%20as,in%20part%20by%20Dillon's%20testimony.&text=From%201909%20to%201979%2C%20under,deemed%20%E2%80%9Cunfit%20to%20produce%E2%80%9D.
Against this backdrop, you would expect public health experts at CDCR to bend over backwards to build trust, so as to engender cooperation. Instead, they’ve done exactly the opposite. The most obvious problem, of course, has been the botched transfer from CIM. 8/
This is why the AG’s brief was disingenuous: “[P]etitioners’ attempts to suggest prisoner transfers of any kind are not safe or effective is not well taken.” The irony of taking offense at people’s understandable mistrust after this colossal fiasco is completely lost on them. 9/
The transfer issue is just the tip of the iceberg. Why would prisoners comply with PPE-wearing requirements when they see guards, frequently and openly, flouting these requirements with no consequences? 10/
Why would people rush to report symptoms and get tested when the consequence is that they’ll be put in places which they’ve associated, for decades, with punishment and deprivation--such as death row or solitary confinement cells? 11/
Most importantly, given the history of medical experimentation in prison, how can CDCR and CCHCS create trust when rolling out a vaccine, so that people don’t suspect them, understandably, of subjecting them to untested, unreliable treatments? 12/
The problem is not that “the physical plant is not conducive to compliance.” It’s that the atmosphere of neglect, indifference, and cruelty, and the resulting deep mistrust, does not engender compliance, and CDCR has exacerbated this problem at every turn. /fin
