Sick inmates at Airway Heights Corrections Center are calling conditions “obscene” and “decaying.” Some have described urine on the floor of a gym where 150 coronavirus-positive inmates are sharing four toilets.
As the prison faces the fastest and largest COVID-19 outbreak in Washington state prisons yet, minimum-security prisoners are still making food in the Washington State Correctional Industries factory for between 90 cents and $1.70 an hour.
Correctional Industries is a state-owned program with “private industry tools” that produces goods, including food, with prison labor to sell mainly to state agencies, according to its website.
Some inmates think that work is part of the reason the virus is spreading rapidly. As of Friday, 792 inmates, more than 40% of the prison’s current population, had tested positive. Twelve days prior, the prison had only seven cases.