70% of Texas prisoners tested have the coronavirus. Experts say it's time for more testing and fewer
Within the walls of Texas prisons overrun with the new coronavirus, information on its spread is still scarce, and the people locked up and working inside are terrified.
At the massive Beto Unit outside of Palestine, a small town about 100 miles southeast of Dallas, hundreds of inmates and dozens of employees have tested positive for the virus, according to department reports. The prisoners have been largely locked in their cells or dormitories for weeks as officials attempt to contain it, but more men are becoming infected, and inmates and their relatives believe the outbreak is much larger than the numbers reported by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice indicate.
“People are scared to tell the officers that they’re sick because they say they’re not doing much of anything to actually help,” said a Beto inmate in a recent letter to his mother, who asked that they not be named in fear of retaliation. “The sick people use the same showers as the healthy people which is why I choose to take a bird bath,” a prison phrase for washing out of a prison cell’s sink.
“It’s pretty hair-raising,” said the mother, whose son has been granted parole but first needs to complete an in-prison program that is now up in the air. “We’re wondering if he’ll ever get to come home.”
https://www.texastribune.org/2020/05/04/coronavirus-texas-prisons-testing/
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