Originally published on January 27, 2021 10:40 am
When Keith Brown tries to describe the 25 years he spent in prison, he keeps coming back to one word: congested.
From the chow hall to the bathrooms, there’s no escape from the constant press of bodies — a feeling that “nobody should ever experience,” he said.
Last spring, Brown was incarcerated at Farmington Correctional Center in eastern Missouri, and as inmates began testing positive for the coronavirus, the 8-by-11 cell he shared with another man felt even more cramped.
“You and your cellie, you’re right there together,” he said. “He's touching everything; he’s breathing and coughing and blowing his nose. It’s really hard to break that cycle of infection.”