{"id":9883,"date":"2020-05-08T18:24:49","date_gmt":"2020-05-08T22:24:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/?p=9883"},"modified":"2020-05-22T17:11:33","modified_gmt":"2020-05-22T21:11:33","slug":"covid19-resource","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/2020\/05\/08\/covid19-resource\/","title":{"rendered":"Our new fact sheet illustrates what&#8217;s in store if prisons and jails don&#8217;t decarcerate now"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>To help advocates argue for more aggressive decarceration as COVID-19 spreads rapidly through the nation&#8217;s prisons and jails, we&#8217;ve created a one page PDF <a href=\"\/virus\/covid19_factsheet.pdf\">fact sheet<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p class=\"popoutright\"><a href=\"\/virus\/covid19_factsheet.pdf\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/\/static.prisonpolicy.org\/images\/covid_spread_may2020_250w.png\" alt=\"Factsheet thumbnail.\" width=\"250\" height=\"320\" class=\"reportcover thumb250\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The fact sheet includes new analysis of recent COVID-19 data, largely gathered by the <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.google.com\/spreadsheets\/d\/1X6uJkXXS-O6eePLxw2e4JeRtM41uPZ2eRcOA_HkPVTk\/edit#gid=1641553906\">UCLA School of Law COVID-19 Behind Bars Data Project<\/a>, put into context using other government data sources. As a result, we were able to make a series of tables and charts to show:<\/p>\n<ul class=\"list\">\n<li><b>Prevalence rates<\/b> of the virus in facilities that have conducted widespread testing;<\/li>\n<li><b>How many <i>asymptomatic<\/i> people test positive<\/b> in facilities with universal testing &mdash; indicating that in places where only the few people with symptoms are being tested, many more untested people are spreading the virus; <\/li>\n<li><b>The largest outbreaks in jails and prisons<\/b> where facilities are testing incarcerated people; and<\/li>\n<li><b>The rapid spread of the virus over time<\/b> in the few places that publish historical data, such as the Cook County (Chicago) jail and Arkansas prison system.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>We also discuss the problems with prison and jail COVID-19 data; namely, that the data we have only reflect test results, and most places still are not testing widely. What we&#8217;ve learned from the places testing everyone &mdash; not just people showing symptoms &mdash; is that the virus is rampant among incarcerated people and correctional staff, which means that some prisons and jails are acting as &#8220;spreaders&#8221; of the virus in local communities.<\/p>\n<p>The rapid spread of the virus among incarcerated people is unsurprising, since <a href=\"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/2020\/04\/03\/density\/\">social distancing<\/a> is <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MonaChalabi\">impossible<\/a> in the close quarters of prisons and jails. And incarcerated people, who disproportionately suffer from chronic illnesses that make them <a href=\"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/2020\/03\/27\/slowpandemic\/\">more vulnerable to the virus<\/a>, are at incredible risk. As our new fact sheet shows, federal, state, and local authorities must freeze admissions and release more people <b>now<\/b> to prevent further spread of the virus through incarceration. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our fact sheet for advocates shows how rapidly the coronavirus can spread through correctional facilities, and how high infection rates in prisons and jails already are.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[36],"class_list":["post-9883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9883"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9883\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10035,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9883\/revisions\/10035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9883"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=9883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}