randomized testing of staff. That pre-
vented some exterior hazards from
entering, sure, but further isolated the
already isolated. “They did give us free
10-minute phone calls once a month,
which was cool,” says Triplett. “A lot of
people in there don’t have any money.”
The result of all these measures was
that La Vista kept coronavirus under
control. Throughout the spring and
summer, no one tested positive.
When COVID does get behind
bars, it can sweep through cramped
interiors faster than on the outside,
infecting the majority of people. In
two Ohio prisons, for instance, nearly
80 percent of inmates were sick by late
April. The American penal system was
operating at around 99.8 percent ca-
pacity in 2017, according to the World
Prison Brief, a database maintained
by the University of London. That
was down from 104 percent a few
years earlier, but still uncomfortably
full when a spiky germ so easily slips
from face to face. The American Cor-
rectional Association recommends
each prisoner have 25 square feet
of “unencumbered” area to them-
selves—in most cases, not enough to
keep a safe social distance.
Comparing virus rates on the out-
side with those on the inside, the
COVID Prison Project, a website that
tracks infections among the incarcer-
ated, found inmates are about three
and a half times more likely to get sick.IT TOOK THREE WEEKS FOR
Triplett to hear she’d been approved
for release and another three weeks
to get her date, the tailest end of
April. Her freedom would come with
a lot of conditions. She’d have to re-
side in a halfway house in metro
Denver till November— in a room
with more than a dozen others, an-
other COVID risk. She couldn’t get a
driver’s license or store her own food
there. But she could get one “pass” a
week: either four hours of freedom to
go to a restaurant or store, or 12 hours
to visit an approved friend or family
member at home. After November,
she would become an “intensive su-
pervision parole inmate,” still a wardof the state with an ankle monitor, but
able to live independently.
As infections soared nationwide in
March and early April 2020, a ma-
jority of states, including Colorado,
created rules that allowed the release
of older people, inmates with little
time to serve, those with underlying
health conditions, and nonviolent of-
fenders. La Vista let 58 people go.
“We started this journey with 1 or 2
percent vacancy, and we’re now at
over 18 percent vacancy,” says Dean
Williams, the Department of Cor-
rections’ executive director, about
statewide incarceration levels.
Federal and state prison popula-
tions dropped by 8 percent between
March and June, from 1.3 million to
1.2 million, according to an analysis
by the Associated Press and the Mar-
shall Project, a nonprofit journalism
venture focused on criminal justice.
Some of that was because people like
Triplett walked out the door. More
significant was a relative pause on put-
ting more people inside. According to
analysis from the data firm Appriss,
by the end of May, jail bookings were
down by 45 percent. In some states,
Colorado included, new policies en-
couraged law enforcement to avoid
arresting people for low- level offenses.
For those still locked up, the World
Health Organization and the CDC is-
sued a series of recommendations
that would help prevent transmis-
sion. New prisoners and those who
have been exposed should quaran-
tine for two weeks—and if solitary
confinement rooms must be used forthat, maintain customary freedoms
like TVs and phone calls. (During
the early stages of the pandemic,
use of solitary increased by 500 per-
cent, according to a report from the
Unlock the Box campaign, which ad-
vocates ending the practice.) Prison
staffs should make soap readily avail-
able and create not-just-for-show
cohorts. In addition to those agen-
cies’ guidance, maintenance crews
should bring air systems into the 21st
century with state-of-the-art ventila-
tion equipped with HEPA or MERV
filters that trap pathogens. And ad-
ministrators should figure out how to
keep people connected virtually and
control spread in hotspots.
“The other thing that has to be on
the table is robust testing,” says Lau-
ren Brinkley-Rubinstein, an assistant
professor of social medicine at the Uni-
versity of North Carolina who studies
the intersection between health and
incarceration. “Universal testing. And
a long-term plan for repeated testing
so you can continue to keep COVID
out of the building.” Toward that end,
she helps run the COVID Prison Proj-
ect initiative to maintain a national
database on screening.
Another priority is making test re-
sults public: unshuttering prisons’
windows so that they’re accountable
to their communities, not just state
and federal corrections agencies. They
could forge collaborations with local
public-health organizations— especially
important because the facilities aren’t
islands. The people inside and those
who drive past their gates live in the
same superpod. “Jails and prisons are
a part of our larger health system,”
Brinkley- Rubinstein says.I GOT OUT TO A ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE,” TRIPLETT
JOKES. ACTUALLY, AFTER LIFE ON THE INSIDE
WITH FEW OPTIONS, SHE DOESN’T MIND HAVING
ONLY SLIGHTLY MORE AT FIRST.
“
POPSCI.COM / WINTER 2020 / PG 100