A new resource from the Pennsylvania Prison Society tracking the spread of COVID-19 in the state’s correctional facilities--the first to compile this information in one place--finds that the pandemic has spread to over a quarter of county jails.
Confirmed cases of people in custody or staff have been reported in 18 of the 62 county facilities. But the number could very well be higher. Missing from the count are six counties that have not reported whether they’ve had any confirmed cases of COVID-19 in their jails. They include Luzerne County, where the infection rate in the general population is 40 percent higher than the state average, and Huntingdon County, home to the state prison with the greatest number of COVID-19 deaths, where 224 people in custody and staff had become infected as of June 9. Among Pennsylvania’s 25 State Correctional Institutes, 14 have reported infections in people in custody or staff.
The Prison Society’s COVID-19 tracking project, completed with the assistance of the Vera Institute, is the first effort to combine state and county data on the spread of the pandemic in Pennsylvania prisons and jails. This novel resource makes possible the first tabulation of the total number of coronavirus deaths in all correctional facilities: 12 people in custody and two employees.
It also reveals new information about COVID-19 in county jails. Until the Prison Society began following up with jails in June, there was no public information available about COVID-19’s impact from more than half of them. All of the counties have now reported data except for Greene, Huntingdon, Luzerne, Mercer, Potter and Somerset. Officials in two others, Lackawanna and Lebanon, asked the Prison Society to file a formal right to know request, a time-consuming process sometimes used as a tactic to evade accountability.
The Prison Society presents this information in two interactive maps available on its website. One map depicts confirmed COVID-19 cases in the prison population in Pennsylvania counties. A second map shows the change in the number of people incarcerated in county jails as of April 8 of this year, after many facilities began to release some people in its custody to mitigate the threat of the coronavirus. The latter map was produced in partnership with The Vera Institute of Justice, which obtained jail population data from 34 counties. All but one reported reductions, which ranged from 5 percent to 77 percent.
Until now, information on the spread of COVID-19 in county jails, which are called prisons in the Pennsylvania system, has been fragmented and scarce. These facilities operate independently from state-run prisons and have no requirement to communicate publicly about virus spread, mitigation efforts, or overall conditions. As a result, it often falls to family members to try to find out for themselves the risk people incarcerated in these facilities face from the coronavirus.
“County prisons are public institutions, using Pennsylvania tax dollars to house Pennsylvania citizens, and they should be publicly accountable. We call on every county to regularly report out testing information,” said Claire Shubik-Richards, executive director of the Pennsylvania Prison Society. “We know the virus spreads exponentially faster once it enters congregate care settings like prisons. And once the virus is inside a prison, it accelerates the spread in the community. Every Pennsylvania community that is concerned about community health should demand information about infection rates and mitigation efforts in its local jail.”
In the absence of reporting requirements, local media outlets are often the sole source of reliable information about the spread of COVID-19 in jails. While many outlets have produced helpful coverage of their local jails, media reports have been sparse in rural counties where there is a dearth of local journalism. To produce its map of county prison infections, the Prison Society compiled information from existing news reports, surveys conducted with jail officials, and, in a few cases, public statements by prison or county officials. Users of the map can hover their cursor over each county to reveal a link to an information page that contains links for the local jail and public defender’s offices. These pages also link to news reports about conditions and mitigation efforts at the jails.
Due to the scarcity of data and limited testing in many prisons, the Prison Society’s new tool does not track the total case counts of COVID-19 in county jails. The map does, however, display the total number of cases reported at state-run prisons in each county.
Since the pandemic began, an average of 30 people a day have reached out to the Prison Society with questions and concerns about what is happening in prisons--three times the normal amount of inquiries. Besides the simple fact of where the virus is spreading, they ask about the availability of testing, early releases, and what the transition out of lockdown conditions will look like, to name just a few areas of urgent interest.
“Families of incarcerated people are naturally concerned,” said Joshua Alvarez, the Prison Society’s director of prison monitoring. “This new resource allows the Prison Society to put information and resources in a single place so we can better help families navigate the ongoing health crisis. In the post COVID-19 future, we hope that this resource can continue to help both families and Prison Society volunteers learn more about what is happening at their local county prisons.”