There were at least 9,437 cases of coronavirus reported among prisoners nationwide as of last Wednesday, reports The Marshall Project Thousands more workers, correctional officers and medical staff have become ill. More than 140 people—most of them incarcerated—have died so far. The number of new cases among prisoners is more than doubling each week. The curve used to measure when the virus is under control is still soaring in prisons even as some parts of the U.S. are starting to flatten the curve through social distancing.
The data are an undercount. While most prison systems release information on the number of positive tests and prisoner deaths in their facilities, less is known about how many people are being tested. Sixteen prison systems are not releasing information about how many prisoners they are testing, including the Federal Bureau of Prisons, which has seen major outbreaks of coronavirus in its institutions. In many places, there have been efforts to bail people out of local jails or to avoid arrests or bail decisions that would land people in jail. Several states have plans to release people early from prisons. Much of the growth in prison coronavirus cases is due to a small handful of states—Ohio, Tennessee, Arkansas, Michigan, North Carolina among them—that have begun aggressively testing nearly everyone at prisons where people have become sick.