Journalist Marcus Henderson covered the COVID-19 outbreak inside his own prison

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 When news of the global COVID-19 pandemic reached San Quentin prison, a state-run men’s prison in California, earlier this year, Marcus Henderson knew it was only a matter of time before the virus spread through the facility. It did, killing 28 inmates and at least one staff member and infecting Henderson and 2,200 other inmates at the outbreak’s peak, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) and The Associated Press. In October, the AP reported that about three-quarters of the inmate population had been infected.

Henderson is the editor-in-chief of San Quentin News, a monthly newspaper run by 15 San Quentin prisoners and distributed to prisons and communities in California. (According to CDCR, Henderson has been imprisoned since 2001 and is eligible for parole in May 2022; CPJ emailed Finsbury, a public relations firm that represents San Quentin News on a pro-bono basis, about what Henderson was sentenced for; Finsbury managing director Jeremy Pelofsky said the firm would ask but did not respond by publication.)

Early on in the pandemic, the newspaper published just a few pieces – including one prescient story by an inmate who said that the virus would wreak disaster in San Quentin – before prison authorities shut down the paper along with other education programs because of the risk posed by people working side by side, reports said. After a six-month hiatus, the publication resumed printing in August, in part with the help of a grant from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

COVID-19 continues to sweep through prisons with devastating force and speed. One in every five prisoners in the United States has had COVID-19, according to a December report in the criminal justice outlet The Marshall Project.

Henderson spoke to CPJ about how he runs the newspaper, his experience living through what the First District Court of Appeals in San Francisco called “the worst epidemiological disaster in California correctional history” in its October order to reduce the prison population, and his joy at being able to publish again. His answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity. 

Read the full interview here


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