Ellen DeGeneres — broadcasting from home a few weeks ago for the first episode of “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” after a three-week hiatus — told the world that coronavirus self-isolation was “like being in jail. It’s mostly because I’ve been wearing the same clothes for 10 days, and everyone here is gay.”
I didn’t find the joke funny at all. DeGeneres was self-isolating in her mansion in Beverly Hills — a house with square footage most of us can only dream of. And inside that mansion, lit by the California sun, DeGeneres has many choices — and access to care if she needs it — unlike the real inmates who are being affected by the COVID-19 pandemic at an alarming rate.
And it’s not just DeGeneres. If you take a look at any social media platform, you’ll see thousands of posts comparing coronavirus self-quarantine to a prison sentence, as if it’s even remotely comparable.
The quarantine-as-jail comparison cuts through me. It’s not because quarantine isn’t deeply challenging — in particular for those with mental illness, without income or with an abusive partner. It’s because we simply don’t get to be that reductive.
I have two immediate family members who have served prison sentences, one for 13 years and one for five. There is no way for me to understand their incarceration, but I have felt the reverberations of their lack of freedom.
My father went into Riverfront State Prison in Camden, New Jersey, from 1994 to 1999 — during my formative years. I was 10. Like a ghost, he simply vanished, and letters kept us loosely tethered. He became abstract to me at that young age. A memory.
My former stepfather was also released from prison just last year after 13 years.
Both served time for nonviolent crimes, a result of a system that punishes people — rather than rehabilitates them — for mental health crises and drug addiction issues. Both have my full compassion.
Discounting The Reality Of The Incarcerated
Knowing their experiences led me to work for PEN America’s Prison Writing Program while I was in graduate school, and that program gave me the