For Inmates With COVID-19, Anxiety and Isolation Make Prison 'Like A Torture Chamber'
NPR's Noel King checks in with John J. Lennon, an inmate at Sing Sing Correctional Facility, about the impact COVID-19 has had on prison life six months into the pandemic.
Back in early April as the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged New York, John J. Lennon was sure he would contract the coronavirus.
As a prisoner at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, N.Y., social distancing was impossible, he says. Making calls on prison phones, Lennon says, meant being "chest to shoulders" with nearly two dozen inmates. "It was a death-trap situation to use the phone," he says.
Not long after he made his
