“You’re on the list.”

It took a few seconds for Chalana McFarland to grasp what was happening. Her name was one of just a few on the list of people who would be released from prison early due to COVID-19. Behind her stood a line of dozens of other women waiting to see if they made it. Only some of them had. But as Chalana received the news, they started cheering, and caused such an uproar that the correctional staff had to reprimand them. That’s when it finally clicked for Chalana — after 15 years in prison, she was finally going home. 

Chalana immediately contacted her daughter.

“I was watching a movie with my roommate when I got the news,” says Nia, who is 19 and lives in Tallahassee, Florida, where she attends university. “At first I was like, ‘What?’ I didn’t think it was real. Then I just fell over crying. I couldn’t even talk. Later, when we talked on the phone, I could hear the happiness in my mom’s voice that this was all finally going to be over.”

A number of prisons and jails across the country have begun to release people who are vulnerable to COVID-19 due to age or underlying health conditions, or people who are incarcerated while awaiting trial. This is the result of pressure from public health officials, advocates, and corrections officials. But the coronavirus poses a threat to all incarcerated people. It can spread rapidly in jails and prisons, where social distancing is impossible, access to hygiene is lacking, and medical care is inadequate. If even one person becomes infected, the potential outbreak could be devastating. There are already more than 10,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in state and federal prisons and jails combined, and this is despite the fact that testing is impossible in most facilities. Facilities including Rikers Island jail in New York, Oakdale federal prison in Louisiana, and many others have already seen deadly outbreaks.

Chalana knew that as a Black woman with asthma, high blood pressure, and sickle cell trait, she was at a higher risk. She feared that her 30-year sentence in federal prison for mortgage fraud would become a death sentence if she remained in prison.

“My greatest fear is to die in here,” she told the ACLU by phone from the prison. “We try to stay away from each other so as to not pass it,” but there is only so much they can do.

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The FCI Coleman facility in Florida houses roughly 400 women. Chalana describes their quarters as tightly-packed cubicles with three walls and no ceiling — about the size of a walk-in closet. Each cubicle contains a bunk bed, but because many of the women are elderly or have medical conditions that impede mobility, the bunks are often cut in half and laid side-to-side, taking up almost all of the floorspace.

“Only one person can move around at a time,” says Chalana. “You can look over the wall and see the person next to you. So if someone gets COVID-19, they’re going to give it to the next person and probably the person on the other side of the wall as well.”

The women at Coleman have already suffered other infectious outbreaks this year. In the winter, flu and Legionnaires spread throughout the facility, hospitalizing several women and overwhelming the prison’s already-overstretched medical staff.

“Sometimes you had to wait if you had to vomit or had diarrhea, because all the toilets were full,” remembers Chalana. “All night long it sounded like a TV war because people were just coughing, coughing, coughing. It was horrible.”

Approximately 40 percent of people in jails and prisons suffer from at least one chronic health condition, and jails and prisons tend to have substandard health care, even on a good day. Often, there are simply not enough medical staff to treat the hundreds or thousands of people living in the facilities.

“It’s not humanly possible to treat the number of people they have,” says Chalana. She says that if someone feels they are sick, they need to fill out a slip and give it to the prison’s medical staff, who then determine whether they need to see a doctor — without examination. Those who are selected can wait up to two weeks to actually see the doctor. The procedure is no different for people with COVID-19 symptoms, who are sent back to the dorms while they await care. “It’s like Russian roulette,” says Chalana. (The Bureau of Prisons did not respond to a request for comment on the care provided at Coleman.)

“The longer you’re here, the more you realize that you have to take care of yourself and the others around you as much as possible, which means that when someone’s sick, we all pull together to see what kind of over-the-counter medicines we have to help the person,” she says. “We make tea. We make chicken soup. We do what we can to try to help each other, but when it’s something that’s viral like the coronavirus, there’s nothing we can do about it.”

The threat of COVID-19 came to light gradually at Coleman. Most of the women learned about the virus from friends and family members on visits or phone calls.

“Once we saw the news about the county jails, and what was happening at Oakdale, that’s when the alarm went off that we were really in danger,” says Chalana, referring to the federal prison in Louisiana where the COVID-19-related death toll is rising.

“You feel helpless,” Nia tells the ACLU. “There’s someone that you love and care about so much, and it seems like no one else really cares about them. So I was just praying, hoping, and waiting because there was nothing I could do.”

Inside Coleman, Chalana was concerned about her family’s safety, too. “We worry about them just as much as they worry about us,” she says. “My parents are both 76 years old, and I worry every day that they’re going to go to the market and contract COVID, and I won’t get to see them while they’re still alive.”

Nia was only four years old when her mother, then an attorney, was sentenced to 30 years in prison for mortgage fraud, a first-time offense. The average sentence for mortgage fraud is 22 months.

“I came to understand that justice and fairness can be incongruent,” she says. “As an attorney, wife, and mother of a 4-year-old, my life as I knew it came to an end.”

Nia was too young to remember. “I don’t have a lot of memory of my mom not being behind bars,” she says. “My whole life I’ve always imagined what it would be like to have my mom actively present in my life. I didn’t expect that to happen until I was in my 30s.”

For the last 15 years, they have stayed connected as much as they could through letters, video calls, and regular visits. Chalana would mail Nia items she made in prison, like bags she knitted for her to take to dance class and folders she decorated for school.

“It was like cool, customized stuff that nobody else had,” says Nia. “And it made me feel like she was there, even though she couldn’t physically be there.”

Still, there were always significant barriers between them. They have never been able to spend more than a few hours together at a time, and that time is always shared with others. Chalana has never seen Nia dance or play basketball, and she missed her baptism. She’s missed every graduation since kindergarten, including Nia’s high school graduation, where she delivered a speech as senior class president.

Nia’s speech was about her mother. 

“It was about not letting your circumstances define your destiny,” she tells the ACLU. “Just because you’ve been dealt certain cards in life doesn’t mean you can’t change and be a successful person on your own.” She wrote the speech with Chalana’s help and read it to her over the phone for practice. 

Now Chalana hopes to see Nia’s college graduation. But most of all, she looks forward to spending time with her daughter without any barriers between them.

“I’ll finally get a chance to know who my daughter is,” says Chalana. “To just snuggle on the couch with her and find out whether she’s as much of a Star Trek fan as I am, or if she doesn’t like asparagus or something like that.”

The upcoming release — any day now — is hard for Chalana to talk about without getting emotional. Her reunion with her family was always going to be momentous, but amid the COVID-19 pandemic, there is an added element that perhaps wouldn’t have been top of mind under different circumstances: their health. Chalana knows she is also lucky to be able to reunite with her family while they are all still healthy.

Though Chalana made the list of releases, her fight to get out of prison isn’t over. Today, she’s sifting through a mountain of paperwork to leave Coleman — which is much harder than getting in, she’s realized. She still doesn’t have a release date and the thought of it is still surreal: “It’s sort of like, ‘Okay, God, please let this all be real.’”

The world Chalana returns to will also be far different from the one she left behind 15 years ago. She’s returning to a pandemic-stricken world where people are staying six feet apart and wearing masks in the street, where stores and restaurants are shuttered and whole cities and states are required to shelter in place. But she’s not worried about what life will be like under quarantine.

“Every day people are saying how frustrated they are being quarantined and how they’re going stir crazy inside,” says Chalana. “Well, that’s our lives every day. Just imagine what you’re going through now on quarantine, but you can’t control what time you go to bed, eat, or shower. There’s no TV, no internet, no computers. That’s a small taste of what our life is like in prison.”

Chalana knows that some people will say “you did the crime now do the time.”

“I get that,” she says. “But at the same time, we’re people too. We’re your mothers, your daughters, your neighbors, your friends … I don’t deserve to die in here, and none of these ladies do.”

Leila Rafei, Content Strategist, ACLU

On April 27, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), ACLU of Florida, and our litigation partners will go to trial in U.S. District Court against the state of Florida to win the ability to vote for hundreds of thousands of eligible state voters now being denied that basic right.

In November 2018, more than 64 percent of Florida voters approved Amendment 4, returning the right to vote to Floridians convicted of felonies who completed their sentence and supervision. The only persons excluded are those convicted of homicide or sexual crimes.

Immediately, the Florida Legislature set out to undermine voters’ decision to re-enfranchise their fellow Floridians. They passed Senate Bill 7066, which mandates that returning citizens — who have completed any prison term, probation, or parole — must also pay all restitution, fines, court fees, and costs before they can cast a ballot. Costs alone can be hundreds or thousands of dollars for every person convicted. In other words, they must pay for the right to vote, a blatant violation of the 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which outlaws poll taxes, as well as the 14th Amendment, which prohibits wealth discrimination in voting.

Along the way, SB 7066 also imposes a system that is impossible for returning citizens to navigate and violates the 14th Amendment right to due process and equal protection. Florida has no centralized database that states how much a person owes in fines and court fees. Records kept by counties and files kept by the state often vary widely on the amounts of legal financial obligations — and even whether money is owed. In fact, even within a county office, those records are sometimes at odds. That makes it nearly impossible for some individuals to determine what they owe, if anything, and whether they are eligible to vote under the new law. U.S. District Court Judge Robert Hinkle, who issued a preliminary injunction blocking SB 7066 in October, called the state’s record keeping “an administrative nightmare.”

The constitutional violations created by SB 7066 don’t stop there. The 14th and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution prohibit voting practices enacted with a racially discriminatory purpose, and SB 7066 is just that: a glaring act of racial discrimination.

Historically, Black Floridians have been disproportionately targeted by the criminal justice system and, through that system, deprived of their right to vote. Also, due to a high incidence of poverty, Black individuals are less able to pay the often-large amounts in fines and fees demanded of them in order to vote.

The members of the Florida Legislature who voted for SB 7066 knew that Black Floridians would be disproportionately affected. In fact, disenfranchising minority voters was the main intent of SB 7066.

SB 7066 also:

• Violates the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits excessive fines.
• Violates the First Amendment rights of organizations, like the Florida League of Women Voters,  that engage in voter registration activity, because it makes unclear who is qualified to vote and who is not.
• Violates the 19th Amendment, which specifically protects women from any election law that denies or diminishes their right or ability to vote. Women, Black women in particular, who are returning citizens are particularly burdened by SB 7066 due to their low average incomes compared to men, making them less able to pay fines and court fees.
• Violates the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which governs voter registration forms, voter registration, and voter list maintenance.

This list of constitutional violations aimed at keeping Black Floridians from the ballot box was not at all what Floridians voted for in November 2018. Nonetheless, in June 2019, the bill was signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Since then, the ACLU and our partners have been tirelessly fighting for voting rights and against SB 7066 in the courts — and we are winning.

In October, Judge Hinkle granted a preliminary injunction against the law. The state then attempted to stay the decision, which would have blocked our 17 named clients from registering to vote in time for the March 17 primaries. In December, Judge Hinkle denied that effort too, and some folks voted for the first time in their lives. Following an opinion from the 11th Circuit affirming Judge Hinkle’s preliminary ruling, the wind is in our sails for trial.

On April 27, we are going to court to put an end to SB 7066 for good.

In this case, Jones v. DeSantis, our litigation partners are the ACLU, ACLU of Florida, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Campaign Legal Fund of Washington, D.C., the firm of Brazil and Dunn of Miami, and attorney Michael Steinberg.

Our fight is for fundamental fairness and a basic right guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

The Trump administration optimistically projects that “substantially under” 100,000 people will die from COVID-19 in the United States. Horrific as that statistic is, a new model suggests it could be a huge underestimate. The government models fail to consider the impact of the virus on the incarcerated population, who will be infected and die at higher rates. And any prison or jail outbreak is bound to spill over into the broader community — causing more people to die in the general public, too.

The ACLU partnered with epidemiologists, mathematicians and statisticians to create a first-of-its-kind epidemiological model that shows that as many as 200,000 people could die from COVID-19 — double the government estimate — if we continue to ignore incarcerated people in our public health response. But we have the power to change this grim outcome. We can save as many as 23,000 people in jail and 76,000 in the broader community if we stop arrests for all but the most serious offenses and double the rate of release for those already detained.

The risk that COVID-19 poses to incarceration facilities is well-documented. Overcrowding, lack of access to hygiene, and substandard health care make jails and prisons potential time bombs for any outbreak, let alone the deadly coronavirus. But what often gets lost in the discourse is the connection between incarceration facilities and the broader community. Correctional staff come to work every day and then return home. People are frequently brought in on arrest and released if they can pay bail, or held for short stays. Any of these individuals can easily and unknowingly bring the virus into a jail, where infections can spread rapidly. And because of this constant flux of people, more sick people in jail will result in more sick people in the general public. 

While all of us will be impacted by inaction, communities of color will feel it most. Black and Brown people are overrepresented in jails and prisons due to long-entrenched racial bias in the criminal legal system, as well as low-income communities. Most correctional staff are also people of color, who will return to families and communities of color while potentially carrying the virus. There is already ample evidence that Black people are dying at much higher rates in major cities across the country. We can expect even more racial disparities in COVID-19 deaths if we allow the virus to spread freely throughout jails. 

But these statistics don’t have to be death sentences. We can flatten the infection curve and decrease infection rates for all of us by reducing the number of people we incarcerate. It’s easier than it may seem. Hundreds of thousands of people are sitting in jail simply because of technical violations, their inability to pay fines and fees, or because they can’t post bail. There is no reason these people should be locked up even under normal circumstances. During the pandemic, the need for reform is more urgent than ever. 

Governors, judges, sheriffs, and chiefs of police can reduce jail populations without changing the law. They should use the powers of their office to stop arresting and incarcerating people for low-level offenses and release those who are vulnerable to COVID-19 due to age or health conditions. Taking these measures would significantly reduce the spread of COVID-19 in jails and thus reduce the death toll for all of us. 

• If we stop arresting people for minor offenses (cutting arrests by half), we can save up to 12,000 lives in jails and 47,000 lives in surrounding communities.
• If we stop arrests for anything but the five percent of crimes defined as most serious by the FBI — including murder, rape, and assault — and are able to double the rate of release for those already detained, we can save 23,000 lives in jails, and 76,000 lives in communities.

These critical reforms are more urgent than ever, but they were needed long before the pandemic. The U.S. incarcerates more people than any other country on earth, with four percent of the world’s total population and 21 percent of the world’s incarcerated population. Further, reforming our incarceration and policing system would go a long way toward reducing inequalities and systemic harm faced by communities of color, who were already over-policed and overrepresented in jails and prisons to begin with.

The ACLU has responded by creating a model executive order and pressuring governors to adopt it, as well as pushing prosecutors and sheriffs to use the power of their offices to reduce jail and prison populations. As a result of these efforts, 16,000 people have either been released or not incarcerated in the first place, and governors have made 15 executive actions. And according to an ACLU poll, there is strong bipartisan support for releasing people from prisons and jails, with 63 percent of respondents supporting the action. 

Taking critical steps toward reform will save lives. Colorado, for example, has reduced its jail population by 31 percent and as a result, will save 1,100 lives and could cut the state’s death toll by a quarter. 

What the numbers don’t show, however, are the individuals who have already faced the impact of our inaction. The ACLU has partnered with the UCLA Prison Law and Policy Program to create a directory of all the people who have died to COVID-19 while incarcerated. Every day that passes without initiating these vital incarceration reforms means that more people will die, and this list will grow. These are more than numbers.

COVID-19 has already changed the way we live and function as a society in ways that would have been unimaginable just a month ago. There is no reason to exclude prisons and jails from these radical changes — especially in a country that incarcerates more of its people than any other country on earth. It’s time for the government to act in the name of public health. Failing to protect incarcerated people will hurt all of us. 

ACLU analysis was led by Aaron Horowitz, chief data scientist, and Brooke Madubuonwu, director of legal analytics and quantitative research.

Udi Ofer, Director, Justice Division, ACLU National Political and Advocacy Department
Lucia Tian, Chief Analytics Officer, ACLU