Federal Inmates to Make Cloth Virus Masks for Prisoners, Guards
Federal Inmates to Make Cloth Virus Masks for Prisoners, Guards
(Bloomberg) -- Federal prisoners have started making cloth masks to help protect themselves and the correctional officers who guard them from coronavirus, one in a series of actions to try to quash outbreaks across the inmate population.
The federal prison industries program, known as Unicor, is manufacturing cloth masks for all prisons, while emergency surgical masks are being issued to a limited number of inmates and staff, according to a Bureau of Prisons memo issued on Monday.
“Staff and inmates should be advised that masks are to be used in interacting with persons when social distancing is not possible,” according to the memo, a copy of which was reviewed by Bloomberg News.
In another sign of the measures the Justice Department is taking, Attorney General William Barr issued a separate memo on Monday allowing agency heads and all U.S. attorneys the option of not imprisoning nonviolent offenders before their trials.
“You should consider not seeking detention to the same degree we would under normal circumstances -- specifically, for those defendants who have not committed serious crimes and who present little risk of flight,” Barr wrote. “Even with the extensive precautions we are currently taking, each time a new person is added to a jail, it presents at least some risk to the personnel who operate that facility and to the people incarcerated therein.”
Fifteen Unicor factories have begun production on masks for prison staff and inmates, said Sue Allison, a Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman. They also are making non-surgical medical gowns for medical facilities, as well as packaging hand sanitizer for use across the bureau and other agencies, Allison said.
Some surgical masks have been issued to correctional officers working in prisons with the biggest outbreaks, but it’s not enough, said Joe Rojas, southeast regional vice president for Council 33 of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 22,000 correction workers in federal prisons.
Correctional officers will be glad to get cloth masks, as they’re better than nothing, but those in close contact with inmates who have coronavirus want the more effective N95 masks, Rojas said.
“The surgical mask is not any good when you’re dealing with someone who has Covid-19,” Rojas said. “They should have planned for this back in December or January.”
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