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= Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on prisons = Before the COVID-19 pandemic, health services within prisons had issues providing adequate care for incarcerated people, and this has only been exacerbated by the impacts of COVID-19. Minority groups within the prison system have been disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

United States
COVID-19 has also spread at an elevated rate within immigration detention facilities in the United States.

Effects of COVID-19 on Minority Groups
Although as of May 13, 2020, black prisoners make up ⅓ of the prison population in Missouri, they have had 58% of the positive tests for the state’s prison population. 43 prison agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Prisons, have refused to provide any demographic information (besides ages) of prisoners affected by COVID-19. This makes knowing which prisons have larger populations of non-english speaking prisoners who need help understanding preventative measures, such as social distancing, much more difficult. Populations that are more likely to be incarcerated are generally disproportionately affected by pre-existing health conditions such as HIV, hepatitis C and tuberculosis. This creates high concentrations of these diseases within prison populations, with those affected by them having a higher susceptibility to contracting COVID.

Health Services
Many incarcerated people have preexisting conditions that worsen within prisons because of the settings such as lack of proper sanitation procedures and sharing close spaces in many already overcrowded prisons. The cost of medical services disincentivizes prisons from responding to incarcerated people’s illnesses. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, prisons had difficulties with managing incarcerated people’s illnesses for reasons such as the inability to triage. "Punitive solitary confinement" has also been employed as opposed to medical isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic. With the use of solitary confinement, incarcerated people are less likely to report any sickness because they do not want to experience solitary confinement since it is often enforced in inhumane ways that have many damaging effects, especially emotional/psychological ones. This means that there are incarcerated people with unreported symptoms interacting with other incarcerated people and staff, which leads to higher chances of the spread of illness. With the COVID-19 pandemic, there is also a lack of testing, trained and informed health services staff, and treatment resources available.

Immigration Detention Facilities
In the past decades, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has turned to private, for profit companies to house the growing detainee population. Facilities operated by private companies are not subject to the same standards of accountability and oversight as government-operated facilities. Prior to the coronavirus, conditions in ICE detention facilities were described as overcrowded, unsanitary, understaffed, and dangerous. Detainees were not given sufficient access to medical care, and outbreaks of diseases such as mumps occurred. Over the course of the coronavirus pandemic, ICE has reported that 7,583 detention center detainees have tested positive for COVID-19, and 8 have died (as of 12/03/2020). However, ICE data has been criticized for having gaps and flaws.

[In March, detainees at several ICE facilities went on strike to demand sanitary supplies. In April, federal judges in California and Pennsylvania ordered ICE to release several detainees who had sued. Lawsuits were also filed in Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Washington state. As of April 2, there were 35,000 people in ICE custody. As of April 13, twenty-seven migrant children held by the Office of Refugee Resettlement had tested positive for COVID-19.]

In April and May, a series of letters were penned and signed by detainees in neighboring detention facilities in Eloy, AZ. The letters described a lack of food, medical treatment, and adequate safety measures as well as inhumane conditions in quarantine. One detainee stated they were going to ask to be deported in order to escape the facility’s conditions.

The Vera Institute of Justice released a peer reviewed model based on ICE data from late May. Of the 80,655 people Vera estimates to be held in ICE detention at any point over a 60 day time period, they calculate that 15,549 would contract COVID-19. 235 of these would require hospitalization. 2-17 people would die in the first 60 days.