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A backlog at Montana’s psychiatric hospital for those facing criminal charges has left people with serious mental illness behind bars for months without adequate treatment. In some cases, judges have freed defendants over due-process violations.
Montana has yet to start spending nearly $2.5 million in federal aid to boost covid detection and mitigation in the state’s prison and jails.
Covid is running rampant through the Alderson women’s prison in West Virginia, in one of the deadliest outbreaks this year at a federal correctional facility. This comes as Bureau of Prisons officials take heat for how the agency has handled the pandemic.
An estimated 300,000 people were held in solitary confinement in U.S. jails and prisons at the height of the pandemic. An international movement is pushing to limit the form of incarceration due to its damaging physical and psychological effects.
As covid case numbers rise nationwide, Georgia and some other states have restricted the case count data they share publicly.
Hesitancy about the vaccines among prison staffers has led to a striking disparity: Inmates are better protected than corrections officials.
In the Los Angeles County Jail system, many inmates hope being vaccinated will get them transferred more quickly to state prison. Some just want to protect themselves against covid, while others are distrustful and refuse vaccination.
Many inmates at Western Missouri Correctional Center, like their peers in prisons across Missouri and the nation, are hesitant about getting vaccinated against covid-19 because they don’t trust prison health care.
One California county is home to the two worst clusters of covid in prisons in the country. Ninety-four percent of Avenal State Prison’s inmates contracted the virus. Physical distancing has proved impossible in a facility housing 50% more people than it should.
Nina Porter of Indiana spent most of her adulthood behind bars, even raising an infant daughter in prison. Now out of prison, she’s drawing on her struggles to create a program that helps other moms get by in a sometimes unwelcoming post-prison world.
Montana sheriffs say the state’s decision to halt prison transfers has led to overcrowding that makes it difficult to quarantine inmates and clean facilities.
Kaiser Health News gives readers a chance to comment on a recent batch of stories.
Amid overcrowding and a shortage of personal protective equipment, at least 208 workers and 83 inmates in the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office jail system have been infected with the coronavirus.
Executions have been on hold in California since 2006, stalled by a series of legal challenges. But COVID-19 is proving a lethal presence on San Quentin’s death row.
At $3.6 billion a year, California spends more on prison health care than other states spend to run their entire prison systems. But despite the spending, and federal court oversight, prisons across California are struggling to contain deadly outbreaks of COVID-19.
Since the start of the pandemic, prisoners and their families have contradicted state officials about the conditions inside Indiana prisons. Many inmates report they've had no way to protect themselves from close contact with other inmates and staff members. They believe contracting the coronavirus is inevitable.
A rural Montana county of 5,000 people lays claim to the state's highest COVID-19 infection rate. The community risks additional spread, though, because of a private prison situated there. If the virus infiltrates the prison and just a fraction of inmates get sick, the area’s limited health resources may not endure.
Indiana prisoners said they can't protect themselves from the virus, as the governor resists calls to reduce overcrowding. "Scared for our lives," said an inmate.
As wardens across the country grapple with COVID-19 outbreaks, inmates are being released to prevent widespread contagion in overcrowded prisons.
Daisy Doronila had a different perspective than most who worked at the Hudson County Correctional Facility, a New Jersey lockup 11 miles from Manhattan. It was a place where the veteran nurse could put her Catholic faith into action, showing kindness to marginalized people.
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