America’s prisons, jails and detention centers have been among the nation’s most dangerous places during the pandemic. Over the past year, more than 1,400 new inmate infections and seven deaths, on average, have been reported inside those facilities each day.
The cramped, often unsanitary settings have been ideal for incubating and transmitting disease. Social distancing is not an option. Testing was not a priority inside prisons early in the pandemic.
Since March 2020, The New York Times has tracked every known coronavirus case in every correctional setting in the United States. More than 2,700 inmates have died.
A year later, reporters found that one in three inmates in state prisons are known to have had the virus. In federal facilities, at least 39 percent of prisoners are known to have been infected. The true count is most likely higher because of a dearth of testing, but the findings align with reports from The Marshall Project, The Associated Press, U.C.L.A. Law and The Covid Prison Project that track Covid-19 in prisons.
The virus has killed prisoners at higher rates than the general population, the data shows, and at least 2,700 people have died in custody, where access to quality health care is poor.
The deaths, and many of the more than 525,000 reported infections so far among the incarcerated, could have been prevented, public health and criminal justice experts say.
Prison officials around the country have acknowledged that their early approach was muddled. The novelty of the virus, some said, made early decisive action nearly impossible because so little was known about how it spread. In some states, the disorganized response lasted well into the pandemic.
In addition to inmates, more than 138,000 prison and jail correctional officers were sickened, and 261 died, according to the Times data.
There were many reasons for the rapid spread of the virus, but several common problems drove outbreaks at every type of detention center. The challenges are still steep, and infections among the incarcerated continue to climb.
In recent weeks, more contagious virus variants have appeared in prisons in Colorado, Michigan and elsewhere. Public health officials say the presence of variants in prisons is likely to be more widespread than known because most facilities do not regularly screen for them.
Most states have announced plans to vaccinate prisoners, but many inmates and correctional officers have been reluctant to get the shots, according to state prison systems and jails.
These factors have left the likelihood of eliminating future outbreaks uncertain, public health experts say, even after much of the nation is vaccinated.
“It’s inevitable once that new strain gets here, it’s going to spread like wildfire,” James Moore, an inmate at G. Robert Cotton Correctional Facility in Michigan, wrote in an email last month. “It’s inevitable. So we’re basically just sitting back and biding our time until we get sick.”