LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas (AP) – One in five U.S. state and federal prisoners has tested positive for coronavirus, a rate more than four times higher than the general population. In some states, more than half of the prisoners have been infected, according to data collected by The Associated Press and The Marshall Project.
As the pandemic reaches its 10th month, and when the first Americans begin receiving the long-awaited COVID-19 vaccine, at least 275,000 prisoners have been infected, more than 1,700 have died and the spread of the virus behind bars has not. shows no sign of slowing down. This week, new cases in prisons reached their highest level since testing began in the spring, far exceeding the peaks before April and August.
“That figure is a lot insufficient,” said Homer Venters, the former chief medical officer of the Rikers Island prison complex.
Venters has conducted more than a dozen COVID-19 prison inspections ordered by a nationwide court. “I still find prisons and prisons where, when people get sick, not only are they not tested, but they do not receive care. That way, they get much sicker than necessary, ”he said.
Now, the launch of vaccines poses difficult decisions for politicians and policymakers. As the virus spreads largely out of control, behind bars, prisoners cannot distance themselves socially and depend on the state for their safety and well-being.
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This story is a collaboration between The Associated Press and The Marshall Project that explores the state of the prison system in the coronavirus pandemic.
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Donte Westmoreland, 26, was recently released from Lansing Correctional Center in Kansas, where he caught the virus while on a marijuana charge. Some 5,100 prisoners have been infected in Kansas prisons, the third highest COVID-19 rate in the country, just behind South Dakota and Arkansas.
“It was like he was sentenced to death,” Westmoreland said.
Westmoreland lived with more than 100 men infected with the virus in an open bedroom, where he regularly woke up to find sick men on the floor, who could not get up alone, he said.
“People are dying in the face of this virus because of this virus,” he said. “It’s the scariest sight.” Westmoreland said he sweated it, trembling on his stretcher until, six weeks later, he finally recovered.
Half of Kansas inmates have been infected with COVID-19, eight times the rate of cases among the general population of the state. Eleven prisoners have died, including five in the prison where Westmoreland was detained. Of the three prison employees who have died in Kansas, two worked at the Lansing Correctional Center.
In Arkansas, where more than 9,700 prisoners tested positive and 50 died, four out of seven had the virus, the second highest infection rate in the U.S. prison.
Among the dead was 29-year-old Derick Coley, who was serving a 20-year sentence in the Cummins Unit’s maximum security prison. Cece Tate, Coley’s girlfriend, said she last spoke to him on April 10 when she said she was ill and showing symptoms of the virus.
“It took me an eternity to get information,” he said. The prison finally told him on April 20 that Coley had tested positive for the virus. Less than two weeks later, a prison chaplain called on May 2 to inform him that Coley had died.
The couple had a daughter who turned 9 in July. “She cried and said, ‘My dad can’t send me a birthday card,'” Tate said. “She said, ‘Mom, my Christmas won’t be the same.’
Almost all prison systems in the country have recorded significantly higher infection rates in the surrounding communities. In facilities run by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, one in five prisoners has had coronavirus. Twenty-four state prison systems have had even higher rates.
Prison workers have also been disproportionately affected. In North Dakota, four out of five prison officials have had coronavirus. Across the country, it is one in five.
Not all states release the number of prisoners they have tried, but states that test prisoners on a large and regular basis may appear to have higher case rates than states that do not.
Infection rates as of Tuesday were calculated by AP and The Marshall Project, a non-profit news organization that covers the criminal justice system, based on data collected weekly in prisons since March. Infection and mortality rates may be even higher, as almost all prison systems today have fewer inmates. that when the pandemic began, rates represented a conservative estimate based on the best-known population.
However, as vaccination campaigns begin, there has been a setback in some states against firing people in prisons prematurely.
“There’s no way to go to inmates … before it reaches people who haven’t committed any crime,” Colorado Governor Jared Polis told reporters earlier this month after plans to initial vaccine priorities of their state put prisoners before the general public.
Like more than a dozen states, the Kansas vaccination plan does not mention inmates or correctional staff, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, a nonpartisan prison data group. Seven states place prisoners at the front of the line, along with others living in crowded settings such as nursing homes and long-term care centers. An additional 19 states have placed prisoners in the second phase of the vaccine launch.
Racial disparities in the nation’s criminal justice system exacerbate the disproportionate toll the pandemic has charged communities of color. Black Americans are imprisoned five times more than whites. They are also disproportionately likely to be infected and hospitalized with COVID-19. and other races are more likely to have a family member or close friend who has died of the virus.
The pandemic “increases the risk for those who are already at risk,” said David J. Harris, managing director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School.
This week, a working group of the Criminal Justice Council led by former Attorneys General Alberto González and Loretta Lynch released a report calling for reducing the prison population, improving communication with public health departments and reporting on better data.
Prisons are often overcrowded and poorly ventilated. Dormitory-style housing, cafes, and open bar cell doors make quarantine nearly impossible. Prison populations are sicker, on average, than the general population and behind-the-scenes health care is notoriously lower than normal. Nationwide, the mortality rate for COVID-19 among inmates is 45% higher than the overall rate.
From the early days of the pandemic, public health experts called for widespread release from prison as the best way to curb the spread of the virus behind bars. In October, the National Academies of Science, Medicine, and Engineering released a report urging states to empty prisons of anyone who was medically vulnerable, about to end their sentence, or at low security risk. public.
But the versions have been slow and uneven. During the first three months of the pandemic, more than 10,000 federal inmates called for compassionate release. Councilors denied or did not respond to almost all of these requests, approving only 156, less than 2%.
A plan to reduce New Jersey’s state prison population, first introduced in June, was maintained in the legislature due to inadequate funding to help those released. About 2,200 prisoners with less than a year to serve were finally released in November, eight months after the pandemic began.
California used a similar strategy to release 11,000 people since March. But state prisons stopped accepting new inmates from county prisons at various times during the pandemic, which simply shifted the burden to prisons. According to the state correction agency, more than 8,000 people are now waiting in California county prisons, which are also coronavirus hotspots.
“We call it ‘screwed county,” said John Wetzel, Pennsylvania’s secretary of correctionals, whose prison system has one of the lowest COVID-19 case rates in the country, with one in seven prisoners infected. But that’s even more so. three times the statewide rate.
Prison walls are porous even during a pandemic, with correctional officers and other employees traveling every day.
“The exchange between communities, prisons and prisons has always been there, but in the context of COVID-19 it has never been so clear,” said Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein, a professor of social medicine at UNC-Chapel Hill who studies seclusion and health. “We have to stop thinking of them as a place apart.”
Wetzel said Pennsylvania prisons have kept virus rates relatively low by widely distributing masks in mid-March, weeks before even the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began recommending them for use. everyday in public, and demanding that staff and prisoners use them appropriately and consistently. But inmates and advocates say prevention measures on the ground are uneven, regardless of Wetzel’s good intentions.
As the country enters winter with rising virus infections, experts warn that unless COVID-19 is controlled behind bars, the country will not control it in the general population.
“If we are going to end this pandemic: reduce infection rates, reduce mortality rates, reduce ICU employment rates, we need to address infection rates in correctional facilities,” he said. say Emily Wang, a professor at the Yale School of Medicine and co-author of the recent report from the National Academies.
“Infections and deaths are extraordinarily high. They are neighborhoods of the state, and we have to fight for them ”.
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Schwartzapfel reported from Boston and Park from Washington.
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This story has been corrected to show that the rate of prisoners who tested positive for coronavirus was more than four times higher than the general population, nor more than four times higher than the general population.