The Unequal Toll of COVID-19 Deaths in Prisons

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This project takes an in-depth look at mortality in U.S. prisons during the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 has taken a devastating toll on prison populations across the United States. Incarcerated people have experienced a risk of infection five times higher and risk of death three times higher than people in the general population. Recent national data collection projects lack both demographic information on deaths and facility-level details about the characteristics of places where deaths have been concentrated. Such data collection gaps around prisons leave open questions about both the unequal repercussions of COVID-19 and the mechanisms by which people in some institutions fared better than others. Findings from this project provide the first systematic accounting of the total mortality toll in prisons across the United States—a necessary foundation for future planning for resiliency efforts.Three research questions are investigated. First, did the risk of facility-level death in prison—from COVID-19, other natural causes, and unnatural causes—during the pandemic (2020-2022) differ significantly from the facility-level risk of death in prisons in prior years (2013-2019)? Second, how are demographic characteristics associated with deaths in prisons, and did these associations differ during the pandemic from prior years? Third, how are state- and facility-level characteristics (including COVID-19 mitigation responses and carceral deprivation) associated with deaths during the pandemic? These questions are addressed by collecting (via state-by-state public records requests) and analyzing monthly facility-level data on all deaths among people in custody of each state Department of Corrections and the Federal Bureau of Prisons between 2013 and 2022. These data are supplemented and verified with 2013 data available through ICPSR, 2014-2019 count data available through the Bureau of Justice Statistics, and 2020-2022 data available through the National Death Index (NDI), vital statistics, and medical examiners’ offices.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.