The title of this post is the title of this lengthy and comprehensive new posting at the Health Affairs Blog. I recommend the lengthy piece in full, and here is how it gets started:
As the global COVID-19 pandemic accelerates, it is critical to note that incarcerated people in the U.S. have a constitutional right to healthcare services that meet community standards, and that older adults and those with chronic and/or serious medical conditions in prisons and jails are at grave risk of experiencing serious illness and death due to a COVID-19 infection -- just as they would be in the community.
Given the rate and spread of infection in the U.S., direct impact in many if not most U.S. correctional systems is inevitable. Failure to mount an adequate response to potential COVID-19 outbreaks throughout the nation’s jails and prisons has the potential to devastate the health and well-being of incarcerated Americans, the nation’s correctional workforce, and people living in the thousands of communities in which our jails and prisons are located. As the epidemic rapidly worsens, the narrow window of opportunity to implement effective prevention and mitigation strategies on behalf of people living and working in U.S. jails and prisons is quickly closing. Last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) called upon correctional systems worldwide to take action, issuing interim guidelines for responding to the pandemic in jails, prisons, and other places of detetion, while protecting the health, safey and human rights of incarcerated people and correctional workforces.
While coordinated action over the coming days and weeks is critical, there are many reasons that responding to COVID-19 in U.S. jails and prisons is uniquely and extraordinarily challenging.
And here is just some of the additional commentary I saw today in this same vein:
"COVID-19 gives us an urgent argument for compassionate release"
"How mass incarceration will lead to mass infection — and how to avoid it"
"‘The Only Plan the Prison Has Is to Leave Us to Die in Our Beds’"
"Larry Hogan can lead by addressing covid-19 in prisons and jails"
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