Study uncovers startling 77% surge in US prison deaths during COVID-19 crisis

A new study has exposed the disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 crisis on incarcerated individuals. It revealed that there was a staggering 77 per cent increase in mortality rates within US prisons during 2020. 

This rate is more than three times the rise observed in the general population during the same period.

The study, published in Science Advances, as per The Guardian, is the most comprehensive analysis of in-custody deaths since 2020.

It found that there was an alarming surge in mortality rates within prisons compared to the previous years.

As per the report, “Covid-19 was the primary driver for increases in mortality due to natural causes; some states also experienced substantial increases due to unnatural causes.”

To compile a comprehensive understanding of the impact of COVID-19 within prisons, the study draws on data from 49 states and federal departments of corrections.

Talking to Courthouse News, lead author Naomi Sugie, an associate professor of criminology, law, and society at the University of California at Irvine, emphasised that the actual toll of Covid-19 has been little understood.

Sugie’s team “staffed a hotline and started this archival project hearing what people were going through in California prisons”.

They studied the effect of COVID-19 in California prisons after lockdowns were imposed in 2020.

As per Sugie, their PrisonPandemic project found that “the conditions that people were describing were so dire and upsetting and really just violations of their health and, some may argue, human rights.”

The findings extend beyond the direct impact of COVID-19, revealed systemic failures. During lockdowns, institutions reduced facility institution and transparency to zero. It also found that some facilities stopped recording the cause of death that year.

As per the authors, despite the Death in Custody Reporting Act passed in 2000, there has been no publicly available information about mortality in US prisons since 2019.

In 2022, the Bureau of Justice statistics found that roughly 2,500 prisoners died of Covid-related causes between March 2020 and February 2021. However, this doesn’t include a rise in mortality rates of natural deaths or unnatural deaths.

As per Sugie, just like in the general population, a lot of states did not test systemically, “so even if someone died of Covid, their death may not have been recorded as Covid-related”.

(With inputs from agencies)