Opinion: I was an incarcerated nursing assistant during Covid. This is what I saw
“It’s not an understatement to say prisoner CNAs are the backbone of the prison medical system. For this work, we earned $1.75 a day,” writes Abraham Santiago.
I doubt people outside prison walls give a thought to what happens when one gets sick or old behind bars. Do they wonder who nurses the sick and the injured, who holds the hands of the critically ill and dying in prisons?
In Connecticut state prisons, much of that work falls to certified nursing assistants who are incarcerated themselves. I was one of them: While incarcerated at Connecticut’s maximum security prison, MacDougall-Walker, I trained, and became, a CNA. For two of my 19 years in prison, I was a caregiver inside the prison infirmary.
