Why women dying in prisons are among the less visible victims of Covid-19 - The Guardian - Cary Aspinwall, Keri Blakinger and Joseph Neff - 2 Jul 2020
Few prison officials appear to have considered the risk factors for women amid the coronavirus outbreak
Melissa Ann Horn’s name appeared over and over in court records and jail blotters in the rural Virginia county where she was born, and where she was arrested for crimes related to her struggles with meth and money.
When she died on 14 April of coronavirus she contracted in a state prison for women, Virginia officials wouldn’t even say her name.
Women are the less visible victims of Covid-19 behind bars – as they are so often overlooked in a criminal justice system that was not designed for them. Though only a small number have died – at least 13 had been reported by Wednesday – their stories illuminate the unique problems women face in prison. They also reflect the all too common ways they get there in the first place: drug addiction and violence involving the men in their lives.
One of the victims was days away from giving birth to her sixth child, but first had to report to prison 900 miles away from her South Dakota home, for a federal drug conviction. Another was a 61-year-old New York woman who survived a life marred by trauma and violence, only to die from the virus. A third was a North Carolina prisoner with a model record, who had served decades of a life sentence for a murder committed by a male accomplice in the aftermath of an armed robbery.
Far more men are locked up in prisons in the US and far more of them have died from coronavirus outbreaks, according to figures compiled by the Marshall Project.
But women in crowded prisons are as much at risk. The Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women, south of Baton Rouge, now has more than 165 Covid-19 positive prisoners, the most of any facility in that state. Two women have died, and nearly every prisoner in one dormitory has the virus. And in Connecticut on Tuesday, a federal judge ordered Bureau of Prison officials to speed up their process to release prisoners at risk, including women at Danbury prison.
After every female death, corrections officials have highlighted pre-existing medical conditions that made the women easier targets for the virus. But few prison officials appear to be considering those same risk factors and actually releasing many women before an outbreak.
Melissa Horn was the first prisoner to die from Covid-19 in Virginia, but her story is common among the women incarcerated there: drug addiction and probation violations led to frequent stays in jail, then prison.
Horn, 49, was sent to prison in 2016 on convictions that included manufacturing meth and violating probation on a previous charge of larceny, records show.
Brittany Brown and Melissa Ann Horn. Horn died of coronavirus in April
Her problems with drugs went back decades in rural Tazewell county, near the West Virginia border, where she struggled to get clean – first from pills, then meth. Her daughter, Brittany Brown, remembers being five years old when her mom was arrested for shoplifting. It was a minor crime, but it set off years of trouble with the law. Horn owed thousands of dollars in court fines and had trouble paying them and staying out of jail, Brown said.
“She’s not a monster like they made her out to be,” Brown said. “She loved her family. She just wanted to be happy, that’s all.”
Chase Collins, the lawyer who in 2015 was appointed to defend Horn because she couldn’t afford to hire one, said her addiction and poverty reflected many of his indigent defense clients.
“There’s a lot of trauma that bears itself out when you look at these criminal records,” said Collins, who now handles government business as the county attorney, referring to Horn’s history. “You’re stealing something to pawn for drugs, or you’re getting into a fight because you’re on drugs. Usually they catch you for the non-drug related things first.”
Shoplifting was how Horn first landed behind bars, due to a law in Virginia that makes a third shoplifting arrest a felony, regardless of the dollar value, Collins said. He recalled another woman whose third shoplifting offense was taking streamers and balloons from Walmart for her young daughter’s birthday.
The Virginia department of corrections’ announcement of Horn’s death on 14 April did not name her, citing the family’s privacy and medical confidentiality. It said a female prisoner had been taken to a hospital in Richmond on 4 April, where she tested positive for coronavirus. The press release emphasized her “underlying health conditions”, including asthma and hepatitis C.
Brown, Horn’s daughter, said she was upset by the bare-bones statement from corrections officials highlighting only her mother’s criminal charges and pre-existing conditions.
“I didn’t think that was fair,” Brown said. “I got three copies of her death certificate. It doesn’t say hepatitis C on it. It says coronavirus.”
The state medical examiner confirmed that Horn died of Covid-19.