With over 2,700 deaths behind bars and slow vaccine acceptance, prisons and jails must continue to decarcerate
Prison Policy InitiativeJun 23, 2021
The Facts
On Sunday, the New York Times (NYT) — citing data collected by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) — reported that state and federal prison deaths in the US nearly doubled during the first year of the COVID pandemic, with six states seeing prison deaths rise more than 50%.
While the pandemic was cited as a key contributor to the elevated death tolls, inmates also succumbed to other illnesses, suicide, and violence. UCLA data shows that 6,182 people died in American prisons in 2020, up from 4,240 in 2019, despite the prison population declining to around 1.3M from over 1.4M.
The Spin
Progressive narrative
The mounting deaths in American prisons during the COVID pandemic underscores just how overpopulated US prisons are and why America must decarcerate. System failure turned prison sentences into death sentences, and it's time that the US release non-violent offenders from jail and seek alternative methods of rehabilitation.
Conservative narrative
While it's tragic to see the effects of COVID as it spread through American prisons, prisoners cannot simply be released en masse because of a pandemic, which uprooted the lives of nearly every person in the world. Mass decarceration — which will only lead to social deterioration — isn't the answer.