E-40 took to Instagram on Monday (April 20) to remind his followers of the COVID-19 crisis that is currently raging through several of America’s prisons.
“Covid-19 is lingering in the prisons,” the West Coast legend wrote. “Inmates did not bring the covid19 on themselves, it’s being brought in by others coming in, NOT from visitors because visitation had been shut down.”
“INMATES need to be protected with masks, hand sanitizers, and gloves, and antibody tests, and the prisons should protect and provide necessities for the inmates,” 40 continued. “Antibody test helps determine if someone is immune to coronavirus or had it previously, then inmates can be separated properly. They don’t deserve being infected by staff. Social distancing doesn’t exist in prison, so many of the federal penitentiaries #BOP have been on total lockdown for two weeks.”
E-40 joins the likes of Meek Mill and Yo Gotti in bringing awareness to the heightened risk that Coronavirus poses to inmates.
Last month, Gotti and Roc Nation’s philanthropic organization Team Roc continued their fight in an effort to improve living conditions for the inmates at Mississippi’s Parchman Prison. Gotti has already brought attention to the alarming health and safety concerns at the prison and is now working on prisoners’ behalf amidst the pandemic.
“Inmates at Parchman have been forced to live in deadly environments that lack clean water, adequate food, electricity, heat, access to healthcare and clothing, among many other basic human necessities,” a Team Roc press release about the issue read. “While visitors are restricted from accessing the prison and visiting loved ones inside, the recent classification of COVID-19 as a pandemic and the rising death toll are cause for alarm in a penitentiary already low on resources.”
Through REFORM Alliance, Meek Mill and JAY-Z previously partnered with author Shaka Senghor to send almost 100,000 protective masks to prisons across the country, with 50,000 masks administered to New York’s Rikers Island Jail, 40,000 toward the Tennessee Department of Correction and 5,000 to Parchman Prison in Mississippi.