As Omicron Surges in State and Federal Prisons, Incarcerated People Remain Vulnerable
The Omicron variant is causing COVID case surges in prisons across the country, with some facilities seeing their highest infection numbers ever. State and federal agencies must double down on efforts to prevent and control outbreaks behind bars.
Data Project Publishes Database With Thousands of Prison Policy Changes Throughout the Pandemic
While COVID-19 has torn through prisons and jails, it has also caused operational changes that have shaped and disrupted life for those inside. Today, we are publishing an original, indexed dataset — the UCLA Law COVID Behind Bars Prison Policy Index — that displays more than 3,500 policy documents announcing those changes in state and federal prisons nationwide.
New Report Shows Prison Releases Decreased During the Pandemic, Despite a Drop in Incarceration
The Bureau of Justice Statistics released a report showing that state and federal prison populations dropped nearly 15 percent from 2019 to 2020. During the same time, however, the number of people released from prison also dropped, by nearly 10 percent.
In the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, our team, led by Research Scientist Neal Marquez, analyzed mortality records from the Florida State Department of Corrections (FLDOC) prison system population and found that COVID caused a 4 year drop in life expectancy in Florida prisons in 2020, while the state's overall population experienced a much smaller drop of 2.7 years.
The study also found that incarcerated people in Florida prisons experienced COVID-19 mortality rates 4.45 times that of the state's overall population.
Op-Ed: What Correctionans Officials Can Do to Keep Omicron From Ravaging One of Our Most Vulnerable Populations (Slate)
In Slate, Communications Manager Joshua Manson warns about the possible catastrophe of Omicron behind bars and suggests three crucials steps to save lives: decarceration, vaccination mandates for prison staff, and continued access to vaccinations and boosters for incarcerated people.
"We already know the cost of inaction. When Omicron comes, we don’t need to repeat the horrors of previous waves of the pandemic. But staving off further tragedy and misery requires acting boldly and quickly, and it requires following science over politics. Decarceration and vaccination will save lives."
RECENT TRENDS IN COVID-19 DATA
The Federal Bureau of Prisons is seeing a huge surge in COVID-19 cases. In recent weeks, the agency has seen record numbers of people infected with the virus in its facilities.
In early January, cases increased in some facilities by as much as 1000% or even 5000%.
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Do you want to download our raw data to perform your own analyses? On GitHub, you can access our raw data as well as our R package "behindbarstools," which includes a variety of functions to help pull, clean, wrangle, and visualize our data.
