Studies: Jails a more potent pandemic vector than prisons

The coronavirus has hit U.S. jails and prisons hard, due to high rates of chronic disease and lack of sanitation and social distancing. That has turned communities surrounding prisons into covid-19 hotspots, as workers spread the virus. More than 60,000 prisoners and staff have been infected with the disease, and more than 600 have died, according to the Marshall Project, which tracks such statistics.

Jails may be a more potent vector for the pandemic than prisons, according to two new studies. Jails "mainly house those who are awaiting trial or inmates serving short sentences," Michael Ollove reports for Stateline. "Those facilities tend to have more churn than state and federal penitentiaries, with greater numbers of people entering and leaving ... increasing opportunities for the disease to disseminate."

Jails could increase covid-19 infections in U.S. communities from between 99,000 to 188,000 overall, according to an American Civil Liberties Union study with researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Tennessee and Washington State University, Ollove reports. The numbers may be bigger, since the paper was published in April and relied on lower death estimates.

A newly published, peer-reviewed study from Health Affairs buttresses the ACLU study: "The researchers found that cycling through Cook County Jail was associated with 15.9 percent of covid-19 cases in Chicago and 15.7% in Illinois as of late April," Ollove reports. Though the study notes that the data isn't enough to establish clear causal relationship, it fits the hypothesis that arrests and jailing practices further the spread of infection.

"It’s not only released inmates, many of whom end up in crowded homeless shelters, who might carry the virus into communities," Ollove reports. "There are also risks of infection from inmates making court appearances or receiving medical care at hospitals in the community."