King County jails struggling with high vaccine rejection among inmates
Despite COVID outbreaks in the county’s jails, some incarcerated individuals say they re not getting enough information about vaccine safety.
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The King County Correctional Facility on Oct. 23, 2020, in downtown Seattle. (Jovelle Tamayo for Crosscut)
After a year of watching the COVID-19 pandemic unfurl from inside his jail cell, Karim Mitchell-Akram became infected himself last month. He was one of scores to come down with the virus during a recent outbreak inside the King County jail in downtown Seattle.
Mitchell-Akram’s headaches and fatigue confirmed what he already knew: This was a disease that deserved to be taken seriously. He had come to that conclusion months earlier as his hours outside of his cell were cut in half, as Interstate 5 below his window went quiet during rush hour, as family on the outside struggled financially and as a grandfather figure caught the virus and died.
Is the Abandonment of Guest Worker COVID Protections a Taste of Things to Come?
The Farm Workforce Modernization Act would likely lead to enormous increases in the number of workers brought to the U.S. by growers.
David Bacon
Dorian Lopez, an H-2A guest worker from Mexico, lives in barracks in central Washington built to house contract workers brought to the U.S. by growers under the H-2A visa program.
 is co-publishing this article.
Growers are just beginning to bring this yearâs wave of contracted laborers into Washington state for the coming season to pick apples, cherries and other fruit. The laborers are arriving to just-relaxed COVID-19 health and safety requirements for farmworkers, courtesy of a Superior Court judge in Yakima County, the heart of the stateâs apple country.
Washington Department of Corrections gets first female secretary
For the first time in its 40-year history, the Washington Department of Corrections (DOC) will be led by a woman.
On Thursday, Gov. Jay Inslee named Cheryl Strange as the agencyâs next secretary.
From 2008 to 2011, Strange was DOCâs deputy secretary. Currently, sheâs the secretary of the Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS). Previously, she was CEO of Western State Hospital (WSH).
âI didnât have to look far to know that we have the right leader, right here, already on our team,â Inslee said in a statement. âI canât think of anyone more qualified than Cheryl to lead DOC into its new future.â
Washington DSHS
For the first time in its 40-year history, the Washington Department of Corrections (DOC) will be led by a woman.
On Thursday, Gov. Jay Inslee named Cheryl Strange as the agency’s next secretary.
From 2008 to 2011, Strange was DOC’s deputy secretary. Currently, she’s the secretary of the Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS). Previously, she was CEO of Western State Hospital (WSH).
“I didn’t have to look far to know that we have the right leader, right here, already on our team,” Inslee said in a statement. “I can’t think of anyone more qualified than Cheryl to lead DOC into its new future.”
WA still holds teens in solitary confinement and worse, suit says
A lawsuit claims three teenagers were handcuffed while in isolation, violating the state’s own policies and raising profound moral questions.
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(AP Photo/Eric Risberg)
Even in the most barren environments, it is possible to see new growth. But that’s no foundation on which to build public policy when we’re talking about kids.
Four years ago, Michael Rogers, then 17, was sitting in solitary confinement at the Regional Justice Center, in Kent, for his part in the robbery and murder of a 16-year-old high school athlete from Federal Way, a boy named Wesley Gennings. The rage and disgust provoked by this crime hardly need reiterating. Yet lawyers at Columbia Legal Services claimed that Rogers, too, was a victim when he and other teenagers at the adult jail were held in windowless isolation cells, sometimes for months. So, in 2017, they filed a lawsuit.