We all remember the panic and the fear that we felt in March of 2020 when the US began

shutting down because of the pandemic.

A pandemic we didn't know much about at the time.

Now imagine how intense that fear would have been if you were an inmate then.

That's how Waylon Youngbird was feeling in his federal prison in Springfield, Missouri

when he sat down and wrote a letter to a federal judge about his situation.

Greetings sir, just a quick letter concerning the pandemic of the coronavirus affecting

the United States.

That's an MPR producer reading his words.

A lot of us here are very concerned for our own safety and worried for our families and

relatives at home.

Youngbird said he had heard on the news that some people have been saying the federal

Bureau of Prisons should reduce the population and make room for serious, violent and high-risk

level inmates.

And let the low-risk sick, terminally ill patients, nonviolent inmates to be given a change

to go to home confinement or to be sent home for their families in this time of crisis.

He asked for home confinement, which would allow him to go home while still being monitored

by the prison.

As a high-risk patient, he was hoping he would get approved.

He was not.

Youngbird died in a prison medical facility from COVID in the fall of 2020.

After this, for nearly two years now, thousands of federal inmates have been trying to get

...