00:03, CA

Hi, my name is Cal Armijo. I'm a 2L here at UCLA volunteering with the COVID-19 behind bars project. And uh before we begin, I uh did want to read this this confidentiality statement for you.

I want to start by explaining how we planned to use to how we plan to use the conversation we are about to have. Our conversation is not legally privileged, and we will not keep what you say confidential. We plan to make transcripts and recordings of our interviews available for use by future research researchers and the general public. And portions may be posted online or discussed in posts on our website, or other published writing. I want our conversation to flow freely. And I realize that you may discuss a sensitive topic or mention a piece of information that you later realize you would like withheld. If you request it now, at the end of the interview or later on after further reflection, we are more than happy to um allow you to review the transcript of our conversation before it's made public, and to redact any portions you deem necessary from the transcript and the recording.

So let's just go ahead and jump into it. I'd like to start off talking about your own professional background, if you could introduce yourself, your name, your organization, um and kind of the work that you do.

01:23, PW

Sure, my name is Paul Wright, and I'm the founder of the Human Rights Defense Center. And we're currently based in Florida. I'm also the founder and the editor of Prison Legal News. And I'm also the editor of Criminal Legal News. And I'm a former prisoner, I spent 17 years in the Washington State Prison System from 1987 until 2003. Um I started the organization in 1990 while I was in prison, and I've been doing it ever since.

And um one of things I think that gives me kind of, I think a more unique vantage point that I think that than a lot of other people have is because HRDC is a national organization, we cover and report on the news and court rulings and decisions on a national level. And we are in contact on a daily basis with prisoners and advocates and family members around the country, um as well. So I think these are all things that that kind of helped give us kind of a more national, um a bigger picture view that I think that a lot of people have with regards to COVID and how its unfolded.

02:25, CA

Yeah, this is absolutely um such an important perspective, I think that for us to have. Could you maybe start off by talking about the kind of work that you did, pre pandemic, and then maybe how that changed once the pandemic started over the course of the pandemic?

02:42, PW

Well, um, a lot of our work has been pretty much the same pre and post pandemic. I'd say that the, you know, our big [unintelligible] have been uh historically have been First Amendment and censorship uh litigation and work on the litigation front. Um also, on the organizing and litigation front, we've done a lot around uh halting or trying to minimize the financial exploitation of prisoners and their families, especially by prison telecom companies. Um and so what we kind of found, at least with us, is, at least for the human rights defense center, is that a lot of the work that we were doing, um when COVID struck, basically kind of intensified, it wasn't like we suddenly veered off and started doing new things. But one of things that we found that was absolutely, you know, we had our we held um we held an internal meeting to set our strategic priorities during the pandemic. And then part of the thing too, is, I think, one thing that really should not be minimized um through this, because I think all the organization, everyone, I've talked to different organizations, it's gone through the same thing. On the one hand, you know, we're having to switch our organizational priorities and, and shifting resources, our limited resources um to deal with COVID. At the same time, organizationally, we're having to deal with COVID impacting us and our staffs as well. Um where, you know, we're pretty much in 2020, in March, April, May, uh, June, everyone is in 2020, everyone is going through, you know, remote working, trying to get your workforce to work remotely, especially, which, on the one hand, it wasn't a big transition for like a lot of lawyers, for example, who are used to working um remotely, already, but then when it came down to support staff, ah which are critical, um not not to minimize their importance in the in organizations, but they are critical and they weren't working remotely before this.

So, you know, on the one hand, you've got new pressures and new um needs massive needs in terms of your constituency of the prison population. At the same time, you've also got a responsibility to maintain your organizational effectiveness, keep your own staff safe. So that um and I'm pleased to say the two years of the pandemic so far HRDC, only only four of us, uh myself included, have have gotten COVID out of our 20 employees. So you know, keeping your staff safe is a priority and also maintaining your organizational effectiveness um through this. So what happened in the early stages of the pandemic is, on the one hand, we're dealing with, you know, keeping, you know, maintaining our effectiveness as an organization. But we also realize that um what we're seeing early on was a lot of prisons and jails clamping down restricting prisoners from getting information about COVID, about how to keep safe. And also, uh which continues is damning. That's what's so great about your project uh that Sharon is doing is, you know, we've seen how prison officials and jail officials are literally lying and doing everything they can to conceal both the extent of COVID behind bars as well as their disastrous response to it and their total indifference to human safety and life. And so our strategic thing, what our strategic conclusion was, we just need to intensify our efforts to um make sure that prison and jail officials can't keep this information out of the prisons on the one hand, that's on the litigation front, on our the editorial front, um we did, I'm gonna say it's like a 180 degree turn or whatever, we just did a total pivot towards COVID. I mean, in Feb as a monthly magazine, we have two monthly magazines and usually the lead time for stories is usually around, um you know, it's around 45 days and others as one issue is going into production. As one issue’s going into production we're already thinking about the following issue. And, you know, just say it is as clear as it was yesterday. Uh the managing editor and I, our March 2020 issue was, you know, we've been working on it's going to be an issue on contraband in prison. And then as February's and being literally the issues already in production. We've already got the cover story laid out. And then wow, there's this COVID pandemic raging through uh the country. It's also hitting prisons and jails. And I think this is in 32 years, I think, the 32 years, I think this is the first time if if we've done it before, it cannot have happened more than once. But I've produced every issue of the magazine in the past 32 years. But we literally killed the cover story we had.

And it's like, okay, COVID is now our editorial focus. And this is what we need to be reporting on. And so on the editorial front, at this point, you know, we're deciding that okay, COVID is our number one thing, I quickly got Dr. Michael Cohen, who he is the former chief medical officer of the New York juvenile prison system, and the medical expert, um basically medical care and detention facilities. And fortunately, he agreed to do a monthly column and every issue about COVID, and what's happening with it, and everything else. So we're very fortunate in that he agreed in that he agreed to do that. So we were able to basically start bringing prisoners um up to date, the latest COVID related medical information, you know, from an actual MD doctor, uh we actually will start doing that in real time. And then of course, part of the thing is, you know, we're we're parsing through myself and the managing editor at the time Ken Silverstein, uh we were able to, you know, we’re literally going through dozens or hundreds of news stories every day coming across our computer screens, about, you know, what's happening with COVID, and prisons and jails around the country. And at the same time, our our office staff is, is you know, they're receiving the mail from prisoners, on what's happening with COVID, and prisons and jails around the country. So we're getting the firsthand reports about what's actually happening there. We're also getting emails and phone calls from prisoners, uh from prisoners, as well as their families and some guards and staff members were contacting us as well, about what was going on. So on the one hand with with HRDC, we're kind of you know, we kind of had on the one hand, from a news and journalism perspective, our publishing branch, we’re busy kind of sifting through all this information, a lot of it contradictory um and, you know, kind of sifting through that and trying to figure out, you know, what's the most newsworthy or the most important information to get out there and also realizing as a monthly magazine, that part of the problem is, literally by the time we're going to press stuff, a lot of information has been superseded or is outdated um we're also posting stuff on social media as well, and pushing stuff out there.

And also, we're getting a lot of information through social media. So we're kind of so as an organization, I'd say that, you know, I'll just say this in 32 years of our existence, and of publishing and advocacy and litigation uh the past two years of COVID have literally been probably, I think, the most challenging uh the most challenging and difficult time in our existence in terms of, um, you know, doing stuff and being able to do to do the work that that we do. And I'd say that one of the things that that I think has been different about this, that um in the past, I would say, you know, we've dealt with crisises, you know, we've covered crisises, especially like, you know, weather related disasters. And as one example, I use Hurricane Katrina. Um but the difference was like with Hurricane Katrina is, you know, the hurricane blows through, and okay, and it does whatever damage it's going to do that said, yeah, the prisoners and, and prisons and jails are left dealing with the aftermath. And the after-effects for for, um you know, months on end, you know, six months later, you know, prisoners were still, you know, suffering terrible effects in prisons in Louisiana. But the other thing is, is that those tend to be like, you know, localized or regional disasters or regional impact, like to use Hurricane Katrina as the example basically, you know, people in Mississippi and Louisiana were the ones who were affected by it. But with COVID, what's been bad about this is that it's been truly a national phenomenon. And it's like, everywhere, and it's all happening at once.

And, and essentially, because, you know, uh HRDC, I'd say, we're probably more of a media organization uh I mean, we're obviously we're an advocacy organization, but we're very much a media organization. And as I'm talking with friends and colleagues of mine, um that, you know, I've been around, I've been around for a while, you know, we're trying to compare what's COVID Like in terms of other um disasters, or major news events, and one of the conversations that came up was well, there's 911. And, but then, as we're having this conversation, I was like, well, you know, I was in Seattle, I was in prison in Washington at the time, and 911 seems to have been more of a west coast of an East Coast thing, because life went on in Washington and San Francisco, and places like that, in ways that it didn't in New York, or in New York City, or whatever, after 911. It's like, yeah, so you know, the World Trade Center got got attacked, and so to the Pentagon, but, you know, we're still going to work in Seattle, you know, we're still riding the subway and um in San Francisco, whereas I think COVID has really been one of the one of the few things that we've seen, at least in my lifetime, where it really is a national phenomenon. It's affecting people in all 50 states at every level of government from, you know, the, the city to the county to um the state level.

And, and also, this is also one of the few events that's really impacted um the prison population, and you know, and again, to use other analogies, it's like, yeah, natural disasters, natural disasters, yes, they have a terrible impact on on prisoners in general, um they feel it in the, in the location that is happening and, but other events, like for example, you know, the, the 911 attacks, for example, if you're in prison, 911 did not affect you. It was like, okay, you know, the World Trade Center, and the Pentagon got attacked, um, you know, what's for Chow today? Or I'm still being denied adequate medical care. Um the guards are still beating and raping prisoners, you know, it doesn't, uh i'm still being exploited with high phone calls, um things like that, in other words prisoner’s reality does not did not change because of that. But COVID, in that respect, was very much a real game changer at a lot of levels. And it's impacting everyone at every level. And and that's been one of the um I think that's been one of the biggest challenges for, certainly for HRDC is watching.

Um you know, watching this happen, and the bigger thing is, it's also this is one of the things too, it's also having the impact on us as an organization, when, you know, we have to cut down our office staff to a skeleton crew of just four or five people coming into the office to process mail and ship out orders, for example. So you know, so it's had a huge impact um at every level, both as an organization as well as our constituency.

14:51, CA

Yeah, I think there's absolutely something to be said about the kind of all-encompassing uh nature of COVID um, I’m curious I mean, decades ago, there were kind of like scientific um studies being done anticipating a kind of a global pandemic. And I mean, you've been in this game quite a bit of time um was there ever any like discussion around how massive contagious disease was going to be handled in prisons prior to COVID? Either like the flu, or um maybe even like the AIDS crisis, that kind of thing?

15:25, PW

Well see I think that's one of the things is that, you know, I'm not going to say that, you know, getting older makes anyone smarter um because I think my grandmother says, no fool, like an old fool. But one of the things that I think does happen with getting older is it gives you perspective, and one of things I can say, as someone who’s been doing this for a while, is, you know, I didn't really need to think about a type of pandemic. I mean, I thought in the global sense, I've actually thought about the fact that, um uh you know, we're overdue for a pandemic, and it's funny around, gosh, I don't know, 10 or 12 years ago, uh my best friend, his father, who lived to be 100. And I think he lived to be 102 or 103. Um I was visiting him in Connecticut around 10 or 12 years ago. And he and somehow the conversation drifted around to the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918. And my friend's father was telling me, how as a child, uh during uh that pandemic, he remembered seeing, you know, people, this is Shelton, Connecticut, people dying, and literally in such numbers that people were literally taking the data out and leaving them by the side of the road so the undertaker could come by, in it with his horse drawn carriage to pick up the bodies, and they were there burning the bodies at the edge of town, and what was the town dump at the time.

And again, this is, you know, this is still I mean, this is around 10 years ago, but this is still someone with living memory that saw this happen. And right here in the United States, it wasn’t some faraway place. And I remember thinking at the time, you know, well, it's been 90 years or whatever, since that last pandemic, we're overdue for one.

And, and I thought about that, but you know, the prison and jail context, one of the things that I've thought about a lot is the fact that you know, in the 30 plus years that I've been doing prisoner rights advocacy and publishing prison legal news, uh we I've seen, uh prisons are literally ground zero for Legionnaires disease prisons are awash with MRCA uh prisons are awash with Hepatitis C, and uh and in the case of MRSA and Hepatitis C, these have almost devolved into being almost prison and jail diseases. You know, you do not see very large concentrations of Hep C outside of prisons and jails and MRSA, it's like, yes, hospitals and prisons and jails is where it's concentrated. And remember, like MRSA a is a disease that it's easy to control with basic hygiene. So the fact that prisons and jails are awash in MRSA and can't even keep things clean enough to um you know, eradicate it tells you just just how bad American prisons are. But you know, but other diseases, you know, drug resistant Tuberculosis, HIV is a classic one. Uh 25 percent of the HIV infected population transits through prison or jail in this country every year. So just the fact that from a public health perspective, you know, if you're thinking, wow, 25 percent of the infected population, uh goes through a prison or jail annually, maybe that'd be a really good public health opportunity to intervene and try to control treat or otherwise eradicate a contagious disease. But, because we live in a country that doesn't have a functioning public health care system, that's crazy talk to even say such things. Um, so I kind of look at, to me, I just kind of look at COVID as just the latest infectious disease or, or mass fatality disease, that hit the American prison system, just in the last 30 or 40 years after HIV/AIDS after Hep C, after MRSA, after drug resistant Tuberculosis.

Um and, you know, that's kind of where, and one of the things I can also see too, is you know, and I hope I'm wrong, but I can also see prisons and jails being almost the COVID reservoir of American society. And, and that's one of the things that we've seen um with all these other diseases is, you know, that like MRSA and Hep C is that, you know, they find, you know, they they kind of fester and and grow or stay around and the the petri dish of disease that American prisons and jails are and that's one of the things that I think is, um you know, kind of, you know, underestimated and not really, um you know, taken into account. Um but, you know, again, like I said, given the track record of American prisons and jails for being literally petri dishes of disease, I can see that being there the case you know, for the immediate future.

20:03, CA

Yeah. All that's absolutely fascinating. Um, I think I'd next like to talk about um prison medical care, um because that's obviously all tied up in this. Um

20:17, PW

Right.

20:18, CA

What was that like before the pandemic? How has that worsened? I mean, outside…

20:23, PW

it was abysmal and uh largely you know non-existent before the pandemic. And I think the pandemic just shows how bad it is. And I think one of the things that also illustrates, I think, a lot of the problems that we've seen is, is the uh, you know, the increased trend towards the privatization of prison and jail health care going doing for profit HMO type models, where you got private companies, many of them are owned by hedge funds now, and the only thing that they're looking at is, um, you know, they want to get as much money from the government and their business model is they get as much money as the government as possible for the government for medical care, and then they actually provide as little medical care as possible. And that's how they make their money. And, you know, it's a terrible, it's a terrible business model to begin with, I think, from a moral and a public health perspective, but in the middle of a pandemic, I think it really showed how bad it was, and is uh for a public health perspective. And, and I think that, you know, literally, the monetization of prisoner’s health um has been, I think, you know, quite a disaster at every level in the past 30 years.

And the pandemic, I think, just showed the real problems with it. Um and I also think, too, is the reality is, I don't think anyone can point to a single prison or jail in America, that anyone says, Oh, they did really good with their medical care during the pandemic, or, you know, here's a stellar example of what Prison healthcare jail healthcare should look like, in the middle of a pandemic. It's, you know, it's not even, um you know, it's not even considered. I mean, the other thing that I think is also worse is the fact that Americans as a nation, you know, we don't even think or we do, no one even thinks that prison or jail healthcare should be anything to write home about, or to hold up as an example of a public health care model or anything.

Um and the fact that here we are two plus years into the pandemic, and about the best we can hear from government officials, is, well, more people might have died or more people could have died. But then we don't really know how many people did die because they're hiding the numbers. And are, they're less than transparent about that. But the fact that, you know, you haven't seen a single uh prison or jail official anywhere in the country that I'm aware of hold up their system or their response as an effective model, or as anything that anyone would want to follow.

Um but again, I think that one of the things when you look at not just the medical care, but I think one things that really uh makes American prisons and jails stand out I think from the rest of the world is the callous indifference to safety and human life that American government officials have. Um, because I think that, um you know, nowhere throughout the pandemic, you know, nowhere have we seen anyone expressing any concern about the lives of the people under their care.

The interesting thing is, they don't show that much concern about the lives of their staff, either. Um which, I'm not surprised by that. But the fact that they didn't pay lip service to the lives of their staff, I think, is even more interesting. But uh but yeah, but I think that um the whole debacle of uh prison healthcare, I think, is just that. But the interesting thing is there's you know, there's no downside to it, there's no, I'm not aware of a single prison official or jail official anywhere in America that's lost his or her job, because of their response or lack thereof to COVID. And which tells you that the people that appoint them, the governors, the legislators, you know, whoever, everyone is perfectly satisfied with this response. And but we also see the same thing during natural disasters when, you know, hurricanes are approaching, um you know, we know there's wildfires, you know, we know that prisoner’s lives are in danger, the response of prison officials goes, hey, let's just hunker down and hope for the best. And, you know, you think about it that that's not really considered, I don't think that's what most people would consider to be an adequate government response is, you know, batten down the hatches and hope not too many people die. But that's what we've seen time after time, after time, whether it was Hurricane Sandy coming through Rikers Island, uh Hurricane Katrina, you know, you name it, that seems to be the response. And COVID has been no different.

24:43, CA

Have you seen a big difference in how the for profit and the not for profit prisons have kind of handled all of this?

24:51, PW

No, I haven't seen any discernible difference.

24:55, CA

Um I mean, I think a lot of this, at least personally, like really speaks to kind of American feelings around, you know, punishment and retribution and that kind of a thing? Um…

25:06, PW

Well, I'm not sure if it's that I think part of the problem is that most everyone in government and most people in the public view prisoners is an expendable population. And, you know, I kind of make a death camp analogy of the Nazis and you know, pre-war Germany, where before the war prisoners were in concentration camps. They weren't sent there deliberately to be killed, or murdered or anything. But if they did die, whether they got beat to death, or died of medical neglect, or whatever, it was no big deal and no one cared. And I think that's kind of the same thing. I think the American prison system and jails are kind of in the same boat as pre-war Nazi Germany, where um you know, you lock a bunch of people up, you're not sending him to prison necessarily to be killed or beaten to death or to die of medical neglect. But if it happens, it's no big deal. And the fact that, you know, generally prison officials, you know, no one’s losing their job, uh when it happens, and even what happens with monotonous regularity, which I think goes to show that, yeah, it's an expected part of the job, you know, no one's sweating you if, um you know, 500 people 500 prisoners die on your watch in a year. Eh, you know, what's the big deal? Um you know, no, one is uh, no one's being held accountable for it. And it's not even being viewed as any type of negative consequence.

26:26, CA

I mean, what what kind of effect does that really have on a person? I mean, especially in a in a COVID context, like um that, really, I think would have quite a bit of effect on on kind of the the inmate mental health um is it? Do you have any kind of thoughts about how that has affected actual inmates? Um…

26:50, PW

Well, I think the big thing is, you know, the, from the letters that we get, and the people I talked to in prison, I mean, the big thing is just the lack of, you know, just kind of the hopelessness and despair. I mean, it's one of those things, I think it's just like being locked in a cage and knowing that people walking in the cage really don't give a rat's ass whether you live or die. And, but, you know, I don't know, when I was in prison. I mean, that was, and it's interesting, I went to prison in 1987, it was the first time I had been incarcerated. And, um, and at first, I think, because, you know, from watching a lot of movies, and everything else, I thought, okay, you know, the biggest danger to me in prison is if I'm going to get raped or stabbed or beaten by other prisoners, or I'm going to get beat up by the guards, or whatever.

But then after around a year or two of being locked up, I realize that, you know, what was most likely to kill me, if I was not going to survive my prison sentence, what was more likely going to kill me was I was going to get sick. And, to me, the biggest thing was, you know, watching prisoners die around me from easily treatable diseases, and, you know, simple stuff, like, you know, guys having some symptoms full blown symptoms of a heart attack, he goes to the prison infirmary, and they give a Maalox. And he's, you know, he's keeling over dead a couple hours later. Um you know, and, you know, diabetics dying, because they can't get proper treatment for their diabetes, people's hypertension, dying of strokes, because they can't get, you know, a five cent pill every day, to control their blood pressure. You know, I think these are the things that, um you know, I think these are things that affect anyone, anyone who's paying attention realizes that what's going to kill you in prison, more likely than not, is going to be a lack of adequate medical care. It's not going to be, you know, this isn't to minimize, you know, prison violence or anything like that, is that yes, it's a real issue. But when you actually look at the statistics, um thousands of prisoners are dying every year for lack of medical care. And for the most part, it's not because they're dying of like, you know, exotic or difficult to treat or diagnose diseases, you know, that virtually everyone's dying of, you know, very, you know, very treatable diseases or illnesses that if you have them outside of prison or jail, and they're promptly treated, it's not that big a deal.

29:10, CA

Has that gotten worse once the pandemic began? Or has that always kind of been at a base level of no health? Um…

29:21, PW

I'd say it's, it's gotten, maybe it's gotten worse, but I don't know to what extent if it's gotten worse, I almost think about this as almost like outside of prison too. Um one of the things that's interesting, I mean, we've had a lot of these internal discussions where, especially in 2020 and 2021, it's getting a little bit better now but as far as the news coverage of prisons, it's just been COVID COVID COVID all the time. And what we've been trying to emphasize in our news coverage is like look, just because there's a pandemic going on, doesn't mean that the guards stopped raping the women prisoners or they stopped being brutal or all the other things that that are bad or or wrong with the American prison jail system. It’s not like any of that stuff stopped or went away. That's still continuing on top of the the response from COVID. And in some respect, I don't know when when I talked to um medical professionals outside of prison, and um and the thing that comes up is that one of the the huge negative impacts about um COVID outside of prison is the extent that because people with COVID have overwhelmed so much of the medical system, people that have, you know, for lack of a better term, I won't say every day diseases or illnesses, but your non COVID related illnesses and diseases aren't getting treatment.

I think at one point, I'm reading news accounts where when COVID was was at its peak in New York City, that, you know, ambulance drivers were being told, you know, if, uh, you know, do the best he can with CPR if someone's having a heart attack, and we just don't have room for him at the hospital type thing. And, and I think that's one of the the corollaries or I think there's an analogy there was what's happened in prisons and jails, is, they already didn't have very good or very much in the way medical resources, they had a abysmal medical facilities to begin with, and then you throw in, and they couldn't handle the medical diseases of the population they already had. And then you throw in a pandemic on top of that, and there's not a lot to overwhelm there. I mean, you know, it's almost like to use the boating analogy, you know, you've already got, you know, you're in the boat, and you've already got uh water coming over to the side of the ship, uh thrown a little pandemic, it doesn't take a lot to capsize the boat. And I think we've seen that around the country. And again, you know, we're not seeing, um you know, we're not seeing a lot in the way of, you know, any prison system that said, you know, hey, we did great with COVID, and our system was resilient, and, you know, we were able to handle it. I mean, I'm not seeing anyone even claiming that uh anywhere in the country.

31:59, CA

Yeah, I mean, it seems obvious that that a lot of this isn't really working, um, working within the confines of what the current system already has, and the structures it already has, what should have been done, what should be done moving forward, um to prevent, you know, this happening again, like uh, I mean, obviously, medical care, and that kind of a thing, but um…

32:26, PW

Well one of the more obvious things would be if they if they actually spend or, you know, put actual money into, um, you know, prison health care, but that's unlikely to happen, just because, you know, prison healthcare is expensive. Um, it's also difficult to do. Um and the other thing I think it's interesting, because, um, and also, you know, we don't have a culture of health care in this country, which, you know, it's interesting is, a couple years ago, I went to Cuba, and I toured, you know, I toured a women's prison there. And I also spoke with some former prisoners, uh and I'm fluent in Spanish. So I don't need an interpreter. I'm Native. I'm a native bilingual speaker. So it's also not one of those things like, hey, my Spanish, isn't that great, I'm not sure what they were telling me, but. One of the conversation I had was one of the former prisoners was trying to ask, ask about, you know, what type of grievance or complaint mechanism or system they had on the Cuban prison system? And, you know, I wasn't, he wasn't really understanding what I was saying. And then when I asked them, well, you know, this is an example, so what happens if the prison Doctor recco- if a prisoner is sick, and the prison doctor recommends a treatment or orders a treatment and the guards won't carry it out? And the guy looks at me, why would that happen? Why wouldn't the guards follow the doctor's instructions? And then it's like, wow, in other countries, that's a totally alien notion, or in this country, that's the norm.

And then getting to the conversation around medical care in prisons, the consensus of the people I talked to both the prison administrators and the former prisoners the medical care in the prison system is the same as what people get outside of prison. And I think that that's a very um that's a very different culture than what we have in this country where um you know, as we know, I mean, you know, so many Americans don't even have basic health insurance or health coverage. And then you know, the actual coverage or care that you get depends very much on your on your wealth and your status and your ability to pay for it. Um so and that's one of the things I think that um on the one hand, I think the the governmental failure to provide all Americans with uh universal basic health care translates into the prisons and jails into this you know, must begrudging thing of, you know, they don't want to provide prisoners with with more than even nominally adequate uh healthcare and and, you know, I think that's almost like a political contradiction that we have in this country. And, you know, but for the courts enforcing I, you know, I think the reality is, you know, if it weren't for the courts uh requiring prison and jail officials to provide some medical care, the norm would be, we wouldn't have any medical care in prisons and jails.

And I think, you know, when you look at the medical care that existed before, say, the 1960s, um uh when the Supreme Court, you know, held prisoners out of constitutional right to medical care, no one's holding that up as some panacea of, of uh, you know, governmental health care. And it’s interesting it's when I’ve, you know, I've talked to prison rights lawyers that were litigating these first, these first cases. And, you know, I remember, um, you know, one of my friends saw me when he first sued the Washington State Penitentiary, they didn't have a prison doctor. His thing was, the medical care was provided by a prisoner, who may have been a corpsman in the navy or a medic in the Army. And this is the prison doctor, and usually people with, you know, very minimal medical training, if any, you know, it's just like, okay, Johnny was in the, you know, was in the Navy, and, you know, took a six week or eight week medical care course in the Navy twenty years ago. He's going to be the prison doctor now.

36:27, CA

Yeah. Wow. Um…then, I guess, what are your feelings? Kind of how we fix all of this? I mean, it sounds kind of systemic and kind of just structures um are you kind of in the abolish prison kind of a camp? Like, um what what kind of a solution do we have to these kind of massive problems?

36:51, PW

Uh I'm not a prison abolitionist. Um for various reasons, I think it's kind of a bigger conversation. But um the uh , but I'd say that where I fall into is, is the less the less is more thing is I think that um the United States has way too many people in prison way too many people, I'm anti-parole and anti-probation. I think those those should be abolished. Um you know, so I'm a pro-abolitionist, and a probation abolitionist.

Um but I think that the bigger thing, though, is that the fact that, you know, we imprison, the fact that we cage um on any given day, I think it's like one out of every sixty-two adults in this country. I think that's an outrage. Um and it hasn't really provided I think, much of anything in the way of public safety um in this country. And I think, you know, we have a definite lack of, um, and essentially, because, you know, a lot most police states actually deliver public safety, you know, and no, no one says that, you know, there's a lot of street crime in Nazi Germany, or Stalin's Russia, you know, people were pretty safe. And um, and in this country, you know, we have the biggest prison population, both in terms of percentage of our adult population, and in terms of uh raw numbers that the world has ever seen. I mean, and we're still not safe. Uh so I think on the one hand, there's the fact that failure of the American police state and then, um, and then I think that, you know, the the conditions, I think, I think one of the the contradictions that Americans have, is we want to cage a bunch of poor people, but we don't want to spend any, any money doing it.

And then the flip side of it, is that said, we still spend more money on caging people than any other country in the world does. And, you know, and I think that's one of the things about, you know, to try to have your cake and eat it, too. We want to lock up a bunch of people and do it on the cheap. And, you know, it's really hard to do that. Um that said, I don't see the, I don't see there being the political will on the part of the executive or the legislative branches anywhere in the country to spend the money on adequate health care, on adequate staffing, and things like that. One of the things that I think is a very interesting uh side effect or whatever of COVID and what's happening is, you know, kind of, I think, you know, the pundits are calling it the great resignation, as you know, more and more people are um leaving their jobs, quitting or whatever.

And, you know, just putting it out there is so what happens if you build a police state, cage two and a half million people and then no one shows up to run the cages? Um, and I think that that's one of the things that that that's one of the more interesting things that uh um you know, one of the more interesting things I think that may wind up happening from the COVID pandemic, isn't going to be that we're going to get medical, better medical care or anything like that. But I just find it interesting is what if no one wants to be a prison guard. Um you know, I think that'll be or how much money do you have to pay people to be a prison guard. And and I think we're already seeing this at a lot of levels when I talk to the to the uh prisoner rights attorneys in the uh Plata versus uh Newsom case around the around the medical care in California prisons, uh one of the first things that the medical receiver did was lift um was lift the salary caps on the positions, because they held that the low salary caps for keeping talented people away from the jobs or qualified people away from the jobs. So what I find amazing is the fact that paying paying psych prison psychiatrist $300,000 a year, and they still can't fill these positions. And because apparently, if you're a psychiatrist who wants to live in Susanville, or Bakersfield or these other places, and part of me thinks, gosh, $300,000 sounds like a lot of money. How bad can these places be? And then the response I get from people that are actually psychiatrists, and that is, you can be mediocre and make twice that much money in the Bay Area. And who would rather live in Susanville over San Francisco?

And, you know, plus, there's the professional, um, you know, there's professional issues to have, you know, do you want to work in a prison or jail? Or do you want to work, you know, in a hospital, or a clinical environment where you're actually paid attention to as a doctor? Um, so I think those are kind of the um you know, I think that's kind of interesting. As far as, yeah, we need massive systemic changes in that. But I mean, I think that it's hard to say that, you know, I don't think the police states reformed themselves or change themselves on their own, for any uh positive manner, or way, I think the reality comes down, I think every time you look at a police state that's changed has been some external factor, usually war, uh some type of natural catastrophe, or some type of wholesale societal collapse. Um and I think that's probably the best we can hope for here in the United States. Um but, you know, we'll see what happens. I mean, and I think that's one of the things is that, you know, I've got to the point now, where I'm old enough um to realize that, you know, thing, things change, when they start to change these change suddenly, and usually in ways that no one predicted or expected. Um I got a degree in Soviet history in 1987, from the University of Maryland, and when I got my degree in 1987, uh no one predicted that the Soviet Union would collapse and cease to exist three or four years later, and that's exactly what happened. So, you know, things change and usually… And that's the other thing too, two and a half years ago, who predicted uh COVID and a mass pandemic, and we're already seeing societal changes resulting from that period. Are things going to go back? I don't know. But you know, I'm not Nostradamus, and, or anything else. I just look at job markets. Those are certainly changed in ways that I don't think anyone predicted. Um you know, predicted two years ago.

43:07, CA

Yeah, absolutely. Um, kind of taking a step back uh I was reading on on your website about some of the censorship that the prison legal news was was dealing with um in like, 2018, has there been kind of an increase in that censorship? Um is it harder to to get information out to prisoners?

43:34, PW

Yeah, I mean, there's been a market increase. I mean, that's one of the things that we did when our litigation team did is you know, we doubled down on our efforts to fight censorship because we thought is more important than ever before for prisoners got access to information about COVID and protecting themselves and what was going on with that than ever before. And but yeah, now we've seen it seems it seems like whatever is going on with the American police state censor, censoring your critics and shutting down the flow of information remains a top priority for them.

44:06, CA

Yeah, absolutely.

I if it's all right with you um, I I'd like to ask you to um share a little bit about what it personally is like to get COVID I am I know you you shared that with me but you're still under some of those effects. Just kind of how has that affected you, your family? Um…

44:33, PW

Um, I mean, I'm I'm fully vaccinated. I've been boosted and then um two Sundays ago not this past Sunday. Sunday before that. I woke up I wasn't feeling all that great. I wasn't feeling like sick sick, but I felt like I was getting a cold or something. And then um you know, I wound up um I took a home test. I tested positive for COVID. And since then, I mean, I feel like I've had the symptoms of what I would call a mild cold. Um like, I've had very little like no fever, um, I've had sinus and chest congestion and a cough. But that's about it. I haven't felt you know, and I've been tired, I mean that I'm not usually like a daytime nap person. Sometimes it's like, hey, it's two o'clock in the afternoon, and I'm staring at the computer screen, I can't stay awake, so okay, it's nap time. But, but it's, um it feels like a very mild cold.

I haven’t had, uh and I've, I've had a lot of friends. In fact, that's one of the things too is, you know, on the on the personal level, um before the vaccines became available, four of my family members in Mexico um contracted COVID, two of them died. One of my aunts died. Uh one of my cousins; he was 61. So around five years older than I was at the time. Uh he died. Uh two of my other relatives have survived. Uh and so on the one hand, I've seen, you know, I say having family members die of COVID. And the other thing that has been bad too, is that because of COVID and people dying with COVID young, you can't go to the funeral. Um you know they’re not even having funerals, unfortunately. Or not much of one. Um so that that's been difficult, um you know, seeing that happen Um you know, on a personal level, um, as far as the actually having COVID, Um, you know, I think, you know, I'm, I don't know if it's because of the, because of the vaccines, and because of the booster or whatever. But I've had very minimal effects. Um you know, I've been self-quarantining and I’ve been staying at home. So on the one hand, that's gotten kind of old. Um the only good, the only positive the silver lining is with gas at 450 a gallon or whatever, here in Florida, I'm not going anywhere. So you know, I'm saving, saving on gas money, but I tested positive again, I tested last night, I tested positive again, so I'm still working from home. Um so on the one hand, it's kind of weird is that, yes, these are mild symptoms, I've got a cough, and that's about it. On the other hand, I've never had mild symptoms for cold that lasts ten days. ((PW laughs)). So which is I think, today marks day ten since I first tested positive. So um you know, other than that, it’s been, I've been working remotely and everything else that kind of the proverbial, yeah, life goes on. But um it's also I think, too, is one of the things that’s fortunate, I think that you know, I have a job where I can do most of what I need to do remotely, um, you know, I'm not, um you know, I don't have a job, or, you know, my economic livelihood depends on me being able or having to go out and physically interact with people in person. Um and the other thing, too, is I haven’t been so debilitated that, you know, I can't uh, you know, I can't keep working or functioning. So, but again, like I say, all that is, um, you know, all this, I think has been one of the challenges I think of, you know, of dealing with, um you know, dealing with COVID.

48:22, CA

I'm sorry for your losses. I think that's way too common of an occurrence these days. I am glad that you're you're not too under the weather, though. Um… I know, sorry.

48:33, PW

What you said, you know, hey, are you available for a thing? It's like, sure. I'm not going anywhere.

48:38, CA

Yeah, that's the good part. Right?

48:40, PW

Yeah.

48:42, CA

Um, were there any kind of, like upsides to the pandemic? Or have there been any kind of like, positives that you you’ve felt like, either positive takeaways, positive responses? Um…

49:01, PW

I can't think of any. I'll leave that for more. I'll leave that for more, you know, more optimistic folks than me but, uh you know, I can't think of any, I mean, I don't know, I can't think of anything when I think factoring like the death toll um the misery that it's inflicted. Uh the economic upheaval, that, you know, that it's brought about um you know, I don't know, I mean, that's, I know, it's like the guys that used to say that, you know, America needs, you know, whatever it is they were against at the time, you know, we need this, like, we need a Typhoid epidemic. You know, it's essentially it's, I mean, I've read, you know, I've read a lot of articles about, um you know, prior epidemics, like you know the Bubonic plague or, you know, diseases that um killed you know, two thirds of the populations of their countries, and whatever, and kind of the social upheavals that that caused in terms of land and property ownership and stuff like that. And on one hand, I kind of look at COVID, as these things go as a relatively mild and innocuous disease, you know, it doesn't have a significant body count. Um you know, the reality that, you know, less than one percent of the people that it infects are dying, puts it, you know, as these things go is not that big of a deal historically, you know, it's not like Ebola, or these diseases that kill, you know, seventy, eighty, ninety percent of the people they infect. Um but that said, it's definitely had, you know, it's definitely had a social impact. It's having an economic impact. Um, you know, I don't know, maybe I'm speaking just for myself, but I would just assume, have not had to live through a pandemic, mild, as it's bad. And um you know, and, like I say, maybe there is a silver lining, or maybe there is a benefit coming out of, but so far that's eluding me. So you know, I guess…

51:02, CA

That’s fair, that’s fair.

51:03, PW

I’ll give it some more thought. But I mean, that said, I mean, I can't think of anyone. I mean, I, I read a lot, and I read across the political spectrum, I also read international media. And that, and I'm not thinking of anyone, you know, I'm really, I mean, that said, I mean, obviously, a lot of people have made massive amounts of money. I mean, if you're the pharma industry, um the surveillance industry and stuff like that, but they were already making bank to begin with. I mean, our ruling class, it was at the billionaire class, they've seen their wealth increase massively, but they're already immensely rich. They are already making immense amounts of money. So, you know, so maybe if you're in the top one percent of the wage earners, you'd say the pandemic’s been great for your bottom line. But, you know, I'm not an oligarch. So, you know, down here, from my perspective, um I'm not seeing much in the way of, you know, I'm not seeing much in the way of any type of positive anything.

52:00, CA

That’s fair.

52:01, PW

Like, if you’d asked me, would we rather have not had a pandemic and just been life goes on as usual? Or have a pandemic I think I would have been fine with not having a pandemic and trundling along as usual.

52:13, CA

Yeah, yeah. Um it looks like we're about to reach the end of our time. Um is there anything kind of last that you would like to have on the record? Any kind of overarching lessons over? Anything like that? Um…

52:30, PW

Uh, I think I've covered all the basics. I mean, I think that the critical thing, though, that I think that um I think that one of the things that uh has been really exposed by I think the COVID pandemic is how bad the criminal justice system is in this country. How terrible the system mass incarceration is, it's callous indifference in the lives of the people that are caged in it. And sadly, I think it also goes to show how little there is in the way of resources to do anything about it. Because, um you know, I've been told. Paul, you know, everyone, you know everyone in the, in the field in prison rights work, and it's like, there's not that many people to know, that's the problem. It's not that I'm super well connected. It's, at most, there's maybe 150 or 200 people to know. That's not a lot of people. And, and I think that's one of the things that we saw is that as COVID was ramping up, you know, as soon as you start saying like, hey, how many lawyers can file a a uh prison medical conditions class-action case, there aren't that many of them. And ours is not a deep bench. I mean, this is like a real. And I think that that's one of in my mind, I think that one of the things that this really illustrated is the fact of, yeah, you got two and a half million people locked up in cages. And there really aren't that many people doing anything about it, or and it goes to lack of funding in the sector. It's an underfunded sector. And in fact, I wouldn't even call it enough of the funding is so sparse, I wouldn't even call it a sector. Um and I think that that's one of the things that COVID, I think has amply illustrated is just the fact that there's not, there's virtually zero capacity. There wasn't a lot of capacity before COVID. And seeing as what HR for HRDC and all the other organizations, the folks I talked to that work at other organizations and that we didn't have a lot of capacity to begin with. And COVID just sucked out what little capacity we had. And pretty much everyone I talked to in our in the criminal justice sector. We're all working at, you know, 150 percent of capacity. I mean, I've had a thing where, you know, I've never worked as hard in my life and I'm not a slacker. And but since COVID started, I mean, I've been literally for last two plus years, I've been working anywhere from 16 to 20 hour days, and I've had like four days off. And, talking to a lot of other people, it's pretty much the same. It's you know, there yeah, we just don't have a lot of anything uh in terms of extra capacity. So, and I don't see that changing anytime soon sadly.

55:01, CA

Yeah, well thank you so much for taking the time to speak to me. I think this is such a valuable perspective Um I'm going to stop recording now.