; however, representatives would not answer specifics about their response or respond to inmates’ version of events. Now, questions abound after the inmates describe the jail’s draconian handling of the strike: taking away access to commissary food, locked down in cells without access to hot water or showers, and placing at least two black Muslim inmates in solitary confinement for inciting a riot.
In its protocols, written in 2009, PrimeCare Medical Inc. — the private medical company that provides service to Franklin County’s jail and oversees more than half of the state’s other county correctional facilities — stated that in the most extreme cases, lockdowns should be used to keep an influenza virus from spreading. But facility lockdowns don’t usually last very long — a few days, at most.
“We’re helpless in here,” Anthony Bernardo, another inmate, says. “You hear these gentlemen threatening to infect us with this virus that is killing people in America, and we have no control over who comes in and who comes on the block.” There was no mention of a strike or ultimatum, but Weeks said that the only way to get the attention of the warden, or people in charge, was to do something drastic.
Even if inmates don’t want to eat the food, they’re still required to take a tray. Inmates who don’t need the food often barter or trade bread, soup, or sweets for other items. Inmates with no access to funds must eat what the jail provides. “The way they were doing the food — the cart hasn’t been cleaned in months,” he says. “It is nasty. It is so filthy.”
Devon Legrand, one of the inmates who helped orchestrate the protest, sent his fiancée, Jenn Boger, a copy of the letter and the list of participants’ names. “My fiancé is in Franklin County Jail with your family members,” Boger wrote, passing along details of the protest. Given the silence from their loved ones, mothers, fathers, and friends in the text thread began to fear that the jail had retaliated., Sunday, April 5th, went smoothly. The inmates refused their food trays all that day.But on Monday, after the men refused their breakfast trays, their jailers took notice.
Bernardo says he did as he was told. He didn’t want to test what an electrified shield felt like. And he’d been hit with a pepper-ball gun in the past. “It’s not very fun,” he says. “It’s like getting shot with a paintball gun, but when you inhale, it’s pepper dust.”
Interesting rhetoric. Every1 in the picture looks a certain kinda way 😐
The Governor of Penn should act on behave of the inmates. What's wrong with him? They already locked up, give them masks, hand sanitizer. Geesh!
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