This review of an article on the jail and prison settings during the COVID-19 pandemic (Barnert, E., Ahalt, C., & Williams, B., 2020) discusses the main points of the article. The points include the custodial settings’ vulnerability to COVID-19, community and occupational health, and planning for the future safety of jails and prisons during the pandemic. The authors of the article took the responsibility to define some of the most valuable resources to address when speaking of custodial settings’ vulnerability to the pandemic. A personal attitude to the issue discussed will also be outlined in terms of the review.
Since the beginning of the year, the COVID-19 epidemic has been one of the most discussed issues modern society is facing. Hence, the more information available to the broad audience, the more predictions and investigations are held in order to define some fundamental patterns of disease transmission and impact on human health. In order to reach a broader understanding of the global threat, various researchers emphasized their studies on the most vulnerable social groups in terms of the virus. Thus, E. Barnett, C. Ahalt, & B. Williams (2020), in their article called “Prisons: Amplifiers of the COVID-19 Pandemic Hiding in Plain Sight,” decided to dwell upon the problem of COVID-19 vulnerability in the context of the prison system.
The very introduction to the article requires specific attention due to the issue discussed. The authors made an opening to the study by providing the statistics of the infection rates in the Chinese prison system to later compare it with the current situation in the US. Such a comparison, to my mind, was extremely beneficial regarding the fact these two states have consecutively become the two leading states in terms of the COVID-19 instance rate. According to the data found, researchers estimated that the New York jail healthcare department constituted an unprecedented infection rate when comparing to the rest of the city. Such overwhelming statistics have become the foundation for future research on the matter of infection containment in custodial facilities.
To explicitly address the issue, authors state that while people are not quite preoccupied with the prison inmates’ health conditions, they forget that thousands of prison officers and staff workers are also exposed to high infection risk. However, whereas inmates remain in custody most of the time, staff employees continue to communicate with many people, increasing the COVID-19 transmission probability. Hence, it is crucial for healthcare facilities and custodial leaders to take immediate measures to prevent the whole state from catastrophe.
The first part of the discussion is dedicated to the issue of the US custodial vulnerability in terms of COVID-19 expansion. I strongly agree with the relevance of this argument, as overcrowding in the US detention facilities has already achieved an unprecedented rate, limiting one’s access to healthcare, training, and education (Lugo & Wooldredge, 2017). Besides the high population density, however, some individual characteristics crucial for the pandemic thriving were considered in the article:
- Health morbidity of the incarcerated individuals;
- Many inmates are 60+ years old, constituting the major COVID-19 risk group;
- Poor ventilation in overcrowded prison cells;
- Poor hygiene patterns;
- High stress level among inmates that leads to immune system weakening;
- The constant flow of individuals who are placed in prison;
- Lack of proper medical equipment;
- Poor respiratory care;
- Overcrowded facilities being understaffed (Barnert, Ahalt, & Williams, 2020).
Bearing in mind such a variety of issues leading to the COVID-19 outbreak, authors decided to address the ways to contain this tendency by using already existing tools created by the World Health Organization (WHO) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The latter, in fact, issued detailed guidance for the issue, considering that the US has one of the highest rates of imprisonment in the world (CDC, 2020).
According to the authors, one of the most widespread strategies to combat the issue is to release some inmates who supposedly do not pose any severe safety threats. However, it was noted that this action is not efficient when evaluating the number of lives at stake. In fact, it would be more beneficial to reconsider the overall facilities’ policy in terms of healthcare and infection control to make an impact in terms of the current situation.
When addressing the issue of community and occupational health, authors emphasize the overall benefit society obtains once prison inmates are taken care of in terms of preventative health. The community health concerns thousands of people being released from custodial settings. Quite often, such people are exposed to the risk of being infected with COVID-19 due to poor living standards and the immune system as a result of incarceration. The issue of occupational health is, by all means, a severe one, as hundreds of staff workers are at risk of being infected on a daily basis with little possibility to be replaced, as nobody wants to settle for a voluntary risk. Moreover, these people are potential infection carriers in their households.
When coming up with an article conclusion, it was estimated that the issue of custodial settings’ vulnerability to the COVID-19 spreading could not be ignored due to the threat society is exposed to as a result. Hence, instead of merely releasing some of the inmates, the overall incarceration system should be reconsidered in terms of existing healthcare policies. Taking the following article into consideration, it may be concluded that while addressing a serious issue, the text itself lacks specification. If the authors defined some detailed strategies on the subject of risk decrease, the paper would have a more practical value. In the current edition, however, the article poses a foundation for future empirical research.
References
Barnert, E., Ahalt, C., & Williams, B. (2020). Prisons: Amplifiers of the COVID-19 pandemic hiding in plain sight. AJPH, 110(7), 964-966.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (2020). Interim guidance on management of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in correctional and detention facilities. Web.
Lugo, M. A., & Wooldredge, J. (2017). Overcrowding in prisons. The Encyclopedia of Corrections, 1-8.