Women are the less visible victims of COVID-19 behind bars—as they are so often overlooked in a criminal justice system that was not designed for them. Though only a small number have died—at least 13 reported as of Wednesday—their stories illuminate the unique problems women face in prison. They also reflect the all-too-common ways they get there in the first place: drug addiction and violence involving the men in their lives.

One of the victims was days away from giving birth to her sixth child, but first had to report to prison 900 miles away from her South Dakota home, for a federal drug conviction. Another was a 61-year-old New York woman who survived a life marred by trauma and violence, only to die from the virus. A third was a North Carolina prisoner with a model record, who had served decades of a life sentence for a murder committed by a male accomplice in the aftermath of an armed robbery.

Far more men are locked up in prisons in the U.S. and far more of them have died from coronavirus outbreaks, according to figures compiled by The Marshall Project.

But women in crowded prisons are as much at risk. The Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women, south of Baton Rouge, has 165 COVID-19 positive prisoners, the most of any facility in that state. Two women have died, and nearly every prisoner in one dormitory has the virus. And in Connecticut, a federal judge Tuesday ordered Bureau of Prison officials to speed up their process to release prisoners at risk, including women at Danbury prison.

After every female death, corrections officials have highlighted pre-existing medical conditions that made the women easier targets for the virus. But few prison officials appear to be considering those same risk factors and actually releasing many women before an outbreak.

Read the full article about female incarceration by Cary Aspinwall, Keri Blakinger, and Joseph Neff at The Marshall Project.