Reports

November 7th, 2022 • Neal Marquez, Amanda Klonsky, and Sharon Dolovich

Racial And Ethnic Inequalities In COVID-19 Mortality Within Carceral Settings: An Analysis Of Texas Prisons

A study from our team about deaths in Texas prisons found that from April 1, 2020 to March 31, 2021, Hispanic people in state custody died of COVID at a rate 2.1 times greater than their White peers, and Black people died of COVID at a rate 1.6 times greater than their White peers.

June 1st, 2022 • American Journal of Preventative Medicine

Life Expectancy and COVID-19 in Florida State Prisons

A study from our team finding that life expectancy among people incarcerated in Florida state prisons has dropped by more than four years, from 77.8 to 73.7 years, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

November 23rd, 2021 • Alix M.B. Lacoste, Saee Paliwal, Erika Tyagi, and Hope Johnson

“Horrible here”: how systemic failures of transparency have hidden the impacts of COVID-19 on incarcerated women

In this report, we highlight trends from inside women’s prisons during the pandemic and draw attention to the lack of transparency from carceral agencies regarding COVID-19 in their women’s facilities. By sharing personal accounts drawn from the first-person oral history archive created by UCI PrisonPandemic, we also seek to elevate the voices and experiences of some of the women behind the data we present.

November 17th, 2021 • Aparna Komarla

COVID-19 vaccination data in California jails: lessons from an imperfect model

California is one of only three states where a state agency, the California Board of State and Community Corrections (BSCC), has been tasked with collecting, aggregating, and reporting COVID-19 data from local jails. However, the BSCC's data are missing key information, such as the numbers of incarcerated people and staff who have been vaccinated. In this report, the Covid In-Custody Project shares some of its primary concerns with the BSCC's data collection efforts and with the vaccination data the project has collected directly from county jails.

November 2nd, 2021 • Alix M.B. Lacoste, Erika Tyagi, and Hope Johnson

Fast, frequent, and widespread: COVID-19 outbreaks inside federal prisons

Nearly 50,000 people in federal prisons have been infected with COVID-19, and at least 256 people have died. We conducted a deeper analysis of the pandemic inside federal prisons and identified several alarming patterns behind these numbers: across the federal prison system, outbreaks have been frequent, wide-reaching, and extremely quick to spread.

October 27th, 2021 • Erika Tyagi, Neal Marquez, and Joshua Manson

A crisis of undertesting: how inadequate COVID-19 detection skews the data and costs lives

Jails and prisons have been dangerously undertesting their populations for COVID-19. That not only means cases have gone undetected and multiplied, but also that we don't know just how prevalent the virus has been. Our own analysis makes clear that true infection rates are likely much higher those reported.

October 6th, 2021 • Neal Marquez, Julie A. Ward, Kalind Parish, Brendan Saloner, and Sharon Dolovich

COVID-19 Incidence and Mortality in Federal and State Prisons Compared With the US Population, April 5, 2020, to April 3, 2021

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, case and death rates in US prisons substantially exceeded national rates. Prison systems subsequently reported adopting several policies to contain COVID-19 spread, including limiting social interactions, distributing personal protective equipment, and expediting prisoner releases, although failures of infection prevention and control have been documented. We examined COVID-19 cases and deaths among US federal and state prisoners during the first 52 weeks of the pandemic and compared these rates with the overall US population, updating a previously published report analyzing COVID-19 incidence and mortality in prisons through June 6, 2020.

August 18th, 2021 • Amanda Klonsky and Erika Tyagi

As COVID rates rise, mandate vaccine for prison staff

Across the United States, unvaccinated corrections staff are helping to fuel a public health emergency. In the majority of states that report this data, fewer than half of prison staff have gotten a shot, according to data collected by the UCLA Law COVID-19 Behind Bars Data Project. This is a particularly alarming fact considering that at least 114,000 prison workers have been infected with COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, at least three times the rate of the overall population.

July 31st, 2021 • Theresa Cheng

"COVID Is Spreading Like Wildfire in ICE Facilities — Decarceration, reducing transfers, and public health measures can help "

As case numbers have risen again in the midst of skyrocketing detentions and more transmissible variants, ICE must show that it is serious about protecting the health and safety of those in its custody. The most effective way to reduce the threat of COVID-19 to people in ICE detention is to broadly decarcerate in order to reduce population density inside. Increasing the detained population at this junction is only adding gasoline to the fire.

July 28th, 2021 • Amanda Klonsky and Neal Marquez

Florida still is not protecting people in prisons, communities from COVID-19 surge

July 27th, 2021 • Andrea Allen, Minali Aggarwal, and Neal Marquez

As long as there is COVID-19, ICE detention centers will be poised for disaster

Even low levels of community spread continue to pose a deadly threat to people in immigration detention.

April 2nd, 2021 • Marc F Stern, Alexandra M Piasecki, Lara B Strick, Poornima Rajeshwar, Erika Tyagi, Sharon Dolovich, Priti R Patel, Rena Fukunaga, Nathan W Furukawa

Willingness to Receive a COVID-19 Vaccination Among Incarcerated or Detained Persons in Correctional and Detention Facilities — Four States, September–December 2020

Persons living in correctional or detention facilities are at increased risk for COVID-19. Certain jurisdictions have prioritized COVID-19 vaccination of incarcerated or detained persons. Among incarcerated or detained participants at correctional and detention facilities in four states who were surveyed before authorization of COVID-19 vaccines for emergency use, 45% were willing to be vaccinated. Willingness to be vaccinated was lower among participants who were younger, identified as Black/African American, and lived in jails. COVID-19 outbreaks among incarcerated or detained persons can exacerbate inequities in COVID-19 outcomes and contribute to community transmission. Interventions are needed to improve vaccine confidence among incarcerated or detained persons.

July 8th, 2020 • Brendan Saloner, Kalind Parish, Julie A. Ward, Grace DiLaura, and Sharon Dolovich

COVID-19 Cases and Deaths in Federal and State Prisons

Novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) represents a challenge to prisons because of close confinement, limited access to personal protective equipment, and elevated burden of cardiac and respiratory conditions that exacerbate COVID-19 risk among prisoners. Although news reports document prison outbreaks of COVID-19, systematic data are lacking. Relying on officially reported data, we examined COVID-19 case rates and deaths among federal and state prisoners.

July 8th, 2020 • JAMA Network

COVID-19 Cases and Deaths in Federal and State Prisons

A study using our data finding that, from March to June, 2020, the COVID-19 case rate for incarcerated people was 5.5 times higher than the overall US population case rate. Their age-adjusted death rate was 3.0 times higher.