In 2020, San Quentin State Prison in California had some of the worst rates of COVID infection in the nation. At least 23 people died from COVID after contracting it at the prison. Prisons, jails, and detention centers across the US proved similarly vulnerable to the pandemic, which easily spread among incarcerated populations and into surrounding communities due to the already abhorrent health, sanitation, and human rights conditions of such facilities. Two years later, COVID remains a challenge for San Quentin and California officials. While prisoners are tested regularly multiple times a week, guards and other prison staff are exempted from testing. Sanitation conditions within the overcrowded prison remain atrocious, and prisoners who are exposed to COVID are often quarantined in solitary confinement units. Although California has a more rigorous COVID policy than much of the nation, the state's inability to protect prisoners is a reflection of the fundamental violence of the mass incarceration system. Incarcerated journalist Juan Moreno Haines calls into Rattling the Bars from San Quentin prison with his colleague, journalist Katie Rose Quandt, to discuss COVID policies at the prison, how the ongoing pandemic has made life considerably worse for prisoners, and why freeing people could be a better solution than the band-aid solutions California has attempted thus far.

Juan Moreno Haines is an award-winning incarcerated journalist and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists. He is the editor of the San Quentin News.

Katie Rose Quandt a freelance journalist who writes about criminal justice, incarceration, and inequality. She is a senior editor at the Prison Policy Initiative, and a writer and editor at Solitary Watch.

Studio/Post-Production: Cameron Granadino

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