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Photo by Miles Maguire
The Department of Corrections does not have enough PPE to distribute gear to all its staff.
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By Joseph Schulz and Miles Maguire
The outbreak of COVID-19 at Oshkosh Correctional Institution may have been set off by an asymptomatic staff member, said Rep. Michael Schraa, a Republican from Oshkosh who chairs the Assembly’s Committee on Corrections.
He said that contact tracing points to that scenario as the most likely way the coronavirus got into the facility. “[About] 18% of individuals don't even know that they have the virus,” Schraa said. “That's all that we can think of.”
Since they don't have enough personal protective equipment to go around, state officials are encouraging all staff to acquire it on their own and wear it at work.
Meanwhile officials have placed parts of OCI under “modified operational” status, also known as a lockdown.
The administrative restrictions limit “the operations of the facility and the movement of persons in our care at the facility,” said Anna Neal, a spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections.
“Persons in our care at all facilities will continue to have access to showers, meals and canteen delivery, as operations allow,” she said. “Despite functioning under modified operational plans, we continue to support persons in our care by providing two free phone calls per week, increasing canteen spending limits, and expanding access to additional movies, cable channels and digital TV, wherever possible.”
Because of the global shortage of PPE, the corrections department has been limited in who can receive it, such as “sick patients in our care, healthcare staff [and] transportation staff,” Neal said. More PPE is being provided as it becomes available, she said.
The Bureau of Correctional Enterprises Textile Shop at Green Bay Correctional Institution is currently producing over 200 cloth masks per day, she said.
As of Thursday, no Department of Corrections employees at OCI have tested positive for the virus, according to the DOC website.
Schraa and Rep. Evan Goyke, a Democrat from Milwaukee and member of the corrections panel, have called on the DOC to take further action to contain the transmission of COVID-19 and to be ready to implement a full lockdown at a moment’s notice.
Schraa said putting facilities on full lockdown is rare because it vastly limits inmates’ abilities to move around a facility, exercise and has the potential to negatively impact an inmate’s mental health.
If the DOC places facilities on lockdown too early and inmates are confined to their cells for 30 days or more, Schraa said it would be like “throwing gasoline on a fire and asking for an explosion.”
“There had been riots in other facilities across the United States where the institutions have gone on full lockdown,” he said.
DOC Secretary Kevin Carr has been in conversations with corrections officials across the Midwest to gauge how to best handle the situation, Schraa said.
In terms of releasing at-risk inmates to allow for more distance, Schraa said the DOC has had early discussions, but the topic hasn’t come up in recent weeks.
“That would be, in my opinion, much more difficult to implement because 80% of the individuals that are incarcerated are individuals that have a violent felony,” Schraa said.
He said the recent escape of two inmates from Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage would likely put a damper on those conversations.
One proposal that Schraa says would be more likely would be to release inmates who are up for parole early.
“Let's say a person was scheduled to be released on parole on June 1, the DOC may take a look at that and move that date up,” he said.
