A groundbreaking analysis of US prison deaths during the peak of the Covid-19 crisis in 2020 revealed a staggering 77% surge in mortality rates compared to 2019, which is more than three times the increase observed in the general population.
The study, recently published by Science Advances, is the most comprehensive examination of in-custody deaths during the 2020 period. According to 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.”
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The report, compiled using data from record requests and publicly available information, draws from the records of 49 state and federal departments of corrections.
Naomi Sugie, lead author of the report and an associate professor of criminology, law, and society at the University of California, Irvine, told Courthouse News that the actual impact of Covid-19 within the prison system had not been widely understood.
Furthermore, Sugie began studying the effect of Covid-19 in California prisons after they imposed strict containment lockdowns in 2020. The PrisonPandemic project found that many institutions ceased recording causes of death that year, shedding light on the lack of transparency and communication inside these facilities.
Despite the Death in Custody Reporting Act, which mandates the collection of information regarding the death of any person under arrest or incarcerated, there has been no publicly available information about mortality in US prisons since 2019.
According to the 2022 Bureau of Justice statistics, approximately 2,500 prisoners died of Covid-related causes between March 2020 and February 2021, excluding any rise in mortality rates of natural or unnatural deaths.
The study’s authors expressed concern that systemic failures, including restricted access to medical care and measures such as lockdowns and visitor prohibitions, have increased the risk of unnatural deaths, such as drug overdoses, suicide, and violence.
Sugie emphasized the significant underreporting of Covid-related deaths in the prison system and stressed the lack of systematic testing as a major contributing factor.
