I had the honor of working with @AJFaultLines as a correspondent on this film about the catastrophic Covid-19 outbreak at California’s San Quentin prison. More than 70% of the incarcerated men have been infected and 28 died

Watch: http://aje.io/SanQuentin 

I know many will respond to a story like this w/ little sympathy because these men are incarcerated.

Couple points on that: 1) People are redeemable. San Quentin is known as the "mecca of rehabilitation" bc of all the programs & educational courses it offered pre-lockdown.

I interviewed a number of men who served sentences there who told me they're not the same people coming out as they were going in. They were able to understand their lives, what led them down certain paths, and how their offenses affected others and society...

Regardless of that, no one deserves to get sick and die because of state's mismanagement, incompetency and neglect. As one incarcerated man told me, no where else in society right now is it acceptable for a place to be at over 100% capacity. And yet the prisons are.

2nd point: There are hundreds of workers (correctional officers, medical staff) who go in and out of the prison every day and drive back to their communities, sometimes up to 3 hours away. It's not just incarcerated ppl at risk. The public health consequences are far reaching