Katie Park, one of the journalists behind the project, talks to Street Roots about what the team has learned: ‘This really is a serious issue behind bars’
The Marshall Project has been tracking confirmed coronavirus cases and deaths within America’s state and federal prisons since March. In April, about a month into the project, its collected data already showed cases were more than doubling within the nation’s prisons each week.
While new confirmed cases of COVID-19 at this stage in the pandemic are declining in most facilities, the magnitude of sickness and death that has occurred within our carceral system since its start is sobering.
The Marshall Project has counted 386,765 confirmed cases and 2,459 deaths among prisoners, and 105,062 cases and 191 deaths among staff as of March 2, when it update its numbers.
Based in New York City, The Marshall Project is a nonprofit news organization focused on criminal justice. Its COVID-19 tracking project, undertaken in partnership with The Associated Press, is available online and includes graphics that show the number of cases, tests and deaths among staff and prisoners in every state.
Street Roots spoke with one of the journalists behind the expansive project. Katie Park is a data journalist based in Washington, D.C., who before coming to The Marshall Project worked in data visualization and digital design for National Public Radio and The Washington Post.
Emily Green: What would you say is the big takeaway from this project? What is this data telling us overall about our carceral system?
Katie Park: It shows us that this really is a serious issue behind bars. Typically, in the in the past few months, what I’ve seen is a rate of infection among prisoners that has been about four or five times that of the general population. So people who are incarcerated really are far more vulnerable to contracting the virus.
That kind of data, about who’s more vulnerable to the virus, is what shapes public health policy: Who gets vaccines? How do we control the spread of the virus?
First, it’s really important for us to be able to have as much of this information and data as possible to really understand the toll that the virus is taking within prisons.
I think it’s easy to think of prisons as being these closed-off spaces, closed off from the outside community, but that’s not actually the case. Prison staff are moving in and out of facilities every single day, and there’s the possibility of them carrying the virus in and out of prisons. And there also is a lot of churning that takes place. There are transfers between facilities; there are people coming in from county jails.
It really is an issue that affects society as a whole and not just people who are directly part of carceral system.
Green: How has the spread of COVID-19 in prisons differed from its spread in the general population?
Park: Prisons themselves are tough and have conditions that simply make them at high risk for the spread of infectious disease. There’s a high population density — that makes social distancing near impossible — as well as restriction of movement.
They are often poorly ventilated. And people in prisons tend to have less access to health care and sanitizing supplies, like masks, hand sanitizer, things like that. And then, on top of all of those environmental conditions, people who are in prison are more likely to have pre-existing conditions that make them vulnerable to the virus.
There’s really several factors at play here that all kind of intensify the risk to people in prison.
Green: How would you rate the accuracy of the data around the coronavirus that’s being released from state prisons?
Park: There are a lot of caveats that come with the data that prisons are releasing. In the first place, every state prison system, as well as the Federal Bureau of Prisons, recourses numbers a little bit differently. And so trying to find a way to unify that to get a national picture in prisons is pretty difficult. There are some states that define testing differently, or states that omit prisoners from their totals if they’re eventually released from prison. So it can get really hard to get an accurate picture, which is why at The Marshall Project, we have a reporter assigned to every single state. They’re in touch with the public information officers for each prison system to verify this data and question inconsistencies.
Green: The rate of positive test varies a lot between states with the highest, according to your data, being 2 out of 3 prisoners positive in Michigan state prisons. And at the lower end, 1 out of every 15 testing positive in Georgia. Is this due to the number of tests being administered, or would you say that some states are doing a better job than others of ensuring social distancing and (personal protective equipment) are utilized within their correctional facilities?
Park: It’s hard to say because we know so little about what’s actually going on behind bars. Michigan definitely had some enormous outbreaks, but they also underwent mass testing, testing every single person in the prison facilities. In Georgia, the percentage of cases that result in death are higher than in most other states. And so that suggests to me that Georgia might just be testing the most serious cases and missing a lot of asymptomatic cases.
Green: In Oregon, there have been numerous reports of prison staff and prisoners not taking the pandemic seriously, refusing to wear masks, and reports that there is virtually no social distancing taking place within our institutions. Is Oregon an exception, or is this the norm in terms of how the pandemic is being approached in our nation’s state prisons?
Park: It does vary across the board. Some states have talked a lot about taking preventative measures very seriously. But we also have talked to people who are incarcerated who say that’s not really the case. Maybe PPE is available, but not everyone has access to it. Or like you mentioned, some people just aren’t taking the virus seriously. So I don’t think Oregon is an outlier.
Green: Is there anything else you think it’s important people know or learn from this project?
Park: I would underscore that there’s still a lot that we don’t know. Speaking for the general population, studies have been done that show that the virus has a disproportionate effect on Black people. And we haven’t been able to track how these numbers break down across racial lines because most prisons refuse to report that to us, but also some prisons aren’t tracking that data. And so it’s fairly imperative that we can discover as much information as possible and that prison systems make information transparent so that we’re able to understand the full extent of the virus.
BY THE NUMBERS The coronavirus in American prisons
As of March 2:
386,765 confirmed cases of COVID-19 among America’s state and federal prisoners
2,459 deaths due to COVID-19 among America’s state and federal prisoners
323,936 prisoners have recovered
49,324 cases within federal prisons
49,115 cases within California prisons, the most of any state
157 cases within Maine’s prisons, the least of any state
2 in 3 prisoners have tested positive for COVID in Michigan, the highest rate of any state
1 in 15 prisoners have tested positive for COVID-19 in Georgia the lowest rate of any state
191 deaths among prison staff have been publicly reported
As of March 1:
13 states have suspended all visitation within their corrections systems
30 states, including Oregon, have suspended normal visitation but allow legal visits within their corrections systems. Oregon suspended all visitation, including legal visits from March 12 to Aug. 24, 2020.
8 states have resumed all normal visitation, with precautions
Source: The Marshall Project
The coronavirus in Oregon state prisons
As of March 5:
3,549
42 deaths due to COVID-19
1 in 4 prisoners have tested positive
24,923
832 confirmed cases of COVID-19 among prison staff
813 prison staff have recovered
9,156 12,586 prisoners have received one dose of the vaccine
1,256
Source: Oregon Department of Corrections
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