By KRISTIA POSTEMA
Capital News Service
LANSING — Prison social workers have always had challenging jobs, even before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Now with tough rules and regulations aimed at keeping staff and inmates healthy, prison social workers have become imperative for monitoring the mental health of isolated inmates, according to Algeria Wilson, the director of public policy of the Michigan chapter of the National Association of Social Workers.
“Many of our social workers who work in prisons provide a variety of services but mostly mental health services, so they do biopsychosocial exams and make sure that individuals are treated fairly,” Wilson said.
Wilson said that many correctional facilities haven’t allowed social workers to meet with prisoners in person since the pandemic began.
“Social workers in prisons still have to do the mental health and substance use disorder duties, but with COVID it makes the job difficult because they can’t see prisoners on a daily basis so they can’t fully assess the needs in person,” Wilson said.
“When doing a biopsychosocial exam, being in person gains trust and (social workers) can see individual’s gestures – some of that stuff can be difficult via video conference,” she said.
Prisons have been hit hard by the pandemic.
According to MDOC, 25,202 prisoners have tested positive for COVID-19 and 138 prisoners died from the virus.
Chris Ostrander is a social worker at Bellamy Creek Correctional Facility in Ionia and said he’s seen many changes in his role since the pandemic began.
“Prior to the pandemic, we had a caseload of about 60 people we needed to see once a month,” Ostrander said.
“It was mostly just case management, checking in to make sure their medications were working, making sure there were no issues going on with family or personal things. We would do therapy as needed,” he said.
Ostrander said he saw the inmates assigned to him at least once a month for individual therapy sessions. “They would typically come to our office, so we’d see them right in our office.”
According to Ostrander, Bellamy Creek’s social workers also led at least one group therapy session a week before the pandemic. Group therapy, which was beneficial for inmates, was one of the first programs suspended to limit the spread of COVID-19 in the facility, Ostrander said.
“All of our group therapies and programs are on hold. These guys are basically locked in their cells all day long,” Ostrander said.
According to Ostrander, one inmate he works with described life since the pandemic as “being locked in a bathroom with another guy, pretty much 24/7.”
There have been 768 COVID-19 cases among the 1,847 prisoners tested at Bellamy Creek, according to the MDOC.
Isolation has become a part of everyday life for many prisoners now, and the effects on their mental health can be serious, according to a study in the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law.
The article by Jeffery Metzner, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, and Jamie Fellner, a senior counsel member of Human Rights Watch in New York City, said isolation has psychologically harmful effects on prisoners. Those effects can include anxiety, depression, anger, cognitive disturbances, perceptual distortions, obsessive thoughts, paranoia and psychosis.
Ostrander says the pandemic further isolates inmates from their connections to the outside world.
“They don’t get visits — these people haven’t seen their families in about a year now,” he said. “They get one phone call a day to check in with family but that’s about it.”
“I definitely have guys who are telling me they’re more depressed right now,” Ostrander said.
Because of such mental health concerns, Ostrander says that he and the prisons’ other social workers still make sure to communicate with inmates despite the restrictions.
“They don’t come to our office anymore — a lot of its phone communication now,” Ostrander said. “We can go out to the units but they (prison authorities) don’t really prefer it because they’re trying to keep contact down. If I had somebody who really needed attention, I would go out and see them, but most of the time I’m just making phone calls.”
On Feb. 9, Bellamy Creek became the first prison in Michigan to identify cases of the B.1.1.7. COVID-19 variant, which first emerged in the United Kingdom last fall.
Ostrander says that the variant has tightened already heavy restrictions.
“We have to wear full PPE (personal protective equipment) now, N95 masks, face shields and plastic gowns,” Ostrander said. “I’m sitting in my office basically the whole day in full PPE and vaccinated.”
Although contact between inmates and social workers had already decreased sharply, discovering the variant in the facility further limited contact.
According to Ostrander, questionnaires are the new form of communication between prisoners and social workers.
“We have prisoners that are labeled SMIs, which means severe mental illness, and for them we still have to make some type of contact over the phone or by walking out to the unit. But for everybody else who doesn’t have a diagnosis, we just basically send out questionnaires,” Ostrander said. “I’ve got some people on my caseload telling me that (the pandemic) is affecting them.”
Regardless, Ostrander says it is difficult to directly attribute prisoners’ behavior to the pandemic.
“It’s hard because we’re always going through spurts where there’s more gang activity or fights happening,” Ostrander said.
“Right before the variant hit, we had a lot of issues going on in our highest security unit between gangs, so we wonder if it’s in some way related to COVID, but it’s hard to attribute,” he said.
Wilson says there is a connection between the pandemic and new or worsening mental health disorders among prisoners.
“People in our prisons are stressed whether or not they can get COVID and stressed about whether they have to be segregated and that just all causes more mental stress,” Wilson said. “Those who test positive for COVID are segregated and that segregation can cause additional mental health strains on top of being sick.”
Wilson, who is also a member of the Michigan Coalition to End Mass Incarceration, says mental health care is important, but the best way to reduce COVID-19 and the stress it causes prisoners is to “release people.”
According to Wilson, the overcrowded prisons means social workers have more inmates to monitor, which is even more difficult now because the virus spreads faster in overpopulated spaces so there are more restrictions in place to keep prison staff and inmates safe.
“With social workers being limited to how often they can go into the prisons they have limited capacity to provide relief for inmates,” she said. “Caseloads are higher and it’s difficult to be able to assist from afar.”