INSIDE AND OUTreally be inside and for how long.
Across the country, what prisons
have done right—and very wrong—to
control the pandemic could point the
way to a more just justice system. One
that’s better for inmates like Triplett,
who watched the news, wondering
how long it would take COVID-19 to
reach inside La Vista’s walls.
TRIPLETT HAD LIVED IN LA VISTA
since 2014. Then 29, she began a 20-
year sentence for burglary and car
theft as part of a crime ring that
stashed hundreds of stolen items in a
suburban Colorado storage unit. She’d
be 49 when she got out. “I just felt
every thing was hopeless,” she says.
She was mad at the system, at her
place in it. She would cuss out correc-
tional officers. Then one of them asked
her about her life before La Vista.
No one with any authority had ever
wanted to know her that way. And so
she summed up her childhood: She’d
often lived with extended family, be-
cause her young mother had gotten
hard into drugs. Triplett ran away
twice, at 13 and 14, the latter time all
the way to California.
She started smoking weed, then
moved on to psychedelics, ecstasy, and
finally meth. When she was high, she
craved excitement. “I always need my
mind stimulated,” she says. “When I got
bored, I expressed it in an unhealthy
way.” By which she means doing things
like stealing cars and breaking into
houses. The spoils supported her habit,
spiraling into a vicious cycle that got
her arrested more than a dozen times
between ages 19 and 29.
“I just took it to the max,” she says,
although along the way she also took
herself to Pikes Peak Community
College for business coursework. But
then, in 2014, her crimes caught up
with her. She doesn’t mind repeating
this story, and she’s also not exactly
mad anymore about her time at La
Vista. “I have to abide by whatever to
get out of it. I knew the consequences
when I did what I was doing.”
Triplett detoxed in jail before she
arrived at La Vista, where she went
through a group-based rehabilitation
program. She began working in the
prison kitchen, serving food on the
line, toiling in the dish pit, and even-
tually becoming a “diet cook,” helping
make meals for people with special
nutritional needs. She earned just
$0.80 per day, which she used to buy
soap (typically about $1 in the com-
missary) or phone calls (around $1.80
for 15 minutes for in-state numbers).
She also loved a job she had train-
ing dogs, something she hopes to do
again someday in her own house. “A lot
of them came from shelters,” she says,
“so they were broken. We helped them
to regain their confidence and to un-
derstand humans aren’t bad.”
In early 2019, Triplett joined the
inaugural class of an eight-month
program run by the nonprofit Defy
Ventures Colorado, which trains in-
carcerated people in business and
self-awareness and helps them tran-
sition back into society after release.
Soon after the course ended, she
became eligible under state parole
guidelines to apply for early release
into a group home, where she’d still
be considered an inmate under Col-
orado Department of Corrections
custody. And so, in February 2020,
as COVID-19 appeared on her TV
screen and made its way to the Cen-
tennial State, she submitted herpapers to the parole board. While she
awaited its verdict, she watched the
disease ravage the world.
Triplett didn’t believe the virus
spread as easily or made people as
sick as the news claimed (although
federal statistics would beg to differ).
But she did worry about the dispari-
ties between the data and safeguards
available to her inside and those avail-
able to prison staff and locals. She
says she didn’t ever hear from officials
about La Vista’s testing or infection
and quarantine rates. “They didn’t tell
us anything,” she says. Annie Skin-
ner, a spokesperson for the Colorado
Department of Corrections, refutes
that, saying, “Inmates have been pro-
vided information from their facility
leadership regarding their specific
facility situation.” She contends staff
posted educational guidance in com-
mon areas and on screens where
announcements are displayed.
Triplett also reports inequities
in personal protective equipment.
Management issued face coverings
to guards ahead of prisoners. “You
guys get masks, but we don’t, because
we’re, like, subpar citizens?” she re-
calls thinking. La Vista eventually
corrected that in April, two weeks af-
ter the governor asked all Coloradans
to don facewear. Staff gave inmates
masks that would do their job but that
Triplett didn’t find particularly com-
fortable. “They didn’t fit, and made
their ears look like this,” she says, us-
ing her hands to push her own into a
protruding, elfin shape.
Staff then grouped inmates into
fixed cohorts—of eight women, in
Triplett’s case—so that if one person
became ill, they’d expose only each
other. But to Triplett’s thinking, the
system had a flaw: Those assigned to
maintenance or kitchen crews min-
gled with people outside their cohorts.
“They didn’t really keep people sepa-
rated, but they wanted the illusion of
separation,” she contends. Skinner
says all work crews would have been
canceled in the event of a positive case.
Meanwhile, authorities barred all
visitors, including volunteers from
programs like Defy Colorado, and
did temperature screenings andINFECTIONS IN
PRISONS DON’T
ALWAYS STAY THERE.
THEY CAN DRIVE
COMMUNITY SPREAD,
ESPECIALLY THROUGH
STAFF GOING HOME.