As the approaching rollout of a COVID-19 vaccine brings hope of an eventual end to the pandemic, it also introduces ethical dilemmas. With various groups of Americans at heightened risk of exposure, and others at increased risk of severe cases, who should be vaccinated first?

By any reasonable standard, incarcerated people should rank high on every state’s priority list. The COVID-19 case rate is four times higher in state and federal prisons than in the general population — and twice as deadly. And despite the danger of close quarters and high rates of preexisting health conditions among incarcerated people, prisons and jails have widely failed to reduce their populations enough to prevent the spread of the virus. Since March, at least 227,333 people incarcerated in state and federal prisons have tested positive for COVID-19, and at least 1,671 have died. There have also been at least 56,496 cases and 105 deaths among prison staff.

The federal Bureau of Prisons announced in November that it plans to reserve its early allotments of the vaccinations for staff, not incarcerated people. Curious whether this was indicative of broader policy decisions, we investigated how states are planning to address incarcerated populations and corrections staff in their early rounds of vaccination, which may begin as soon as mid-December. To do so, we looked through all 48 publicly available draft vaccination proposal plans, which states were required to submit this fall using guidelines provided by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

Our most positive finding is that 36 of the 48 states addressed (or seemed to address) incarcerated people as a priority group at all. But in many states, correctional staff are prioritized before incarcerated people (staff were also more likely to receive PPE early in the pandemic).

Read the full article about distributing the COVID vaccine by Katie Rose Quandt at Prison Policy Initiative.