Thread by @HuffPost

When Bryan Glant tested positive for COVID-19 in December 2020, a guard at Monroe Correctional Complex told him he had 10 minutes to pack up his essential items. huffpost.com/entry/medical-…

He stepped into his isolation cell — a dirty, dimly lit cement box with only a deflated mattress and a non-working TV welded to the ceiling.

“I was in the hole,” Glant wrote in an account of his experience.
huffpost.com/entry/medical-…

In some ways, the COVID unit was worse than “the hole,” a term used to describe solitary confinement in prisons and jails.

Glant was locked in his cell for several days straight, shaking with pain from his COVID symptoms. huffpost.com/entry/medical-…

Glant is among the hundreds of thousands of incarcerated people who have been subjected to solitary confinement during the pandemic under the guise of medical isolation.

HuffPost collected the firsthand accounts from more than 20 people in five detention facilities.

They experienced painful COVID symptoms while their requests for medical care — or even an extra blanket — went unanswered. Denied access to phones, their loved ones wondered if they were still alive. huffpost.com/entry/medical-…

Even under regular conditions, solitary confinement is a dehumanizing, torturous form of punishment that often leads to depression, self-harm and even suicide.

But its use as a supposedly non-punitive form of medical intervention is particularly cruel.

Reporters @jessicaschulb and @ChrisWBlackwell examined the policy in prisons and spoke to several people who experienced medical isolation.

Read the full story: huffpost.com/entry/medical-…