Covid-19 and decarceration
Karthik Sivashanker, Jessie Rossman, Andrew S. Resnick, Donald M. Berwick
Abstract
The US currently carries the ignoble distinction of being the world leader in both incarceration and prevalence of covid-19.Worse still, around 12% of the 2.3 million people currently in state and federal prisons are over 55 years old, three times more than in 1999. 1 This makes the US especially prone to a large scale outbreak of covid-19 among vulnerable prisoners.This could quickly overwhelm our already strained medical infrastructure.To protect the health of patients and the public, healthcare professionals are already leading the efforts to manage covid-19.But there are other ways in which we can help.We must urgently organise to advocate for safe decarceration and collaborate broadly with other advocates and professionals to advance that cause.