Before the pandemic, nine state prison systems and the BOP were operating at 100% capacity or more. These prison systems were holding more people than their facilities were designed to house. Now, 10 months into the pandemic, we find that there are still far too many people crowded into prisons across the country.

Despite the ongoing pandemic, and efforts to reduce the number of people behind bars, we calculated that 41 states are currently operating at 75% or more of their capacity, with at least 10 of those state prison systems and the federal Bureau of Prisons operating at more than 100%. Only one state — Maine — has a current prison population below 50% of their capacity.

Prison overcrowding has always been a serious problem, correlated with increased violence, lack of adequate health care, limited programming and educational opportunities, and reduced visitation. But during the current pandemic, overcrowded prisons — and even prisons operating at levels approaching capacity — are more deadly than ever. In a recent study of Texas prison capacity, COVID infection rates, and mortality, researchers found that prisons holding between 94 and 102% of their capacity had higher infection rates and more deaths than prisons operating at 85% of their total capacity, suggesting that a prison’s crowdedness correlates with viral spread.

This makes sense when we consider that many state and local governments have mandated restaurants, retail spaces, and schools to operate at a reduced capacity to slow the spread of COVID-19 through communities.Public health and medical experts have recommended decarceration since the beginning of the pandemic, arguing that fewer people behind bars would protect those who remain incarcerated and correctional staff, as well as slow the spread of COVID-19 in surrounding communities. But even as many prison populations slowly decrease in response to the pandemic, there is still not enough space inside most prisons to allow for adequate social distancing or medical isolation and quarantine. Prisons were not designed to address a public health crisis, and even before COVID-19 entered the picture, public health officials knew that correctional and detention settings were breeding grounds for all sorts of communicable diseases.

Read the full article about overcrowded prisons by Emily Widra at Prison Policy Initiative.