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The report presents the justice system’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and recommendations for pandemic preparedness in the future. This report discusses the results of the Priority Criminal Justice Needs Initiative’s series of workshops designed to review what lessons have been learned by the justice system’s response to COVID-19, and what response activities could help address broader challenges in the system. The report includes details on successful interventions and provides recommendations for future policies and processes that could be scaled up and sustained.

This is a rapid review of peer-reviewed and grey literature summarizing guidance for the prevention and control of COVID-19 in custodial settings in the first six months of 2020. The review summarizes global recommendations across 19 domains including: preparedness; physical environments; case identification, screening, and management; communication; external access and visitation; psychological and emotional support; recreation, legal, and health service adaptation; decarceration; release and community reintegration; workforce logistics; surveillance and information sharing; independent monitoring; compensatory measures; lifting control measures; evaluation; and key populations/ settings. The authors also identify a few conflicting recommendations.

This article summarizes the factors that place incarcerated people at high risk for COVID-19 infection and the effective strategies to reduce transmission and complications due to COVID-19, informed by other infectious disease outbreaks. The authors highlight the role of interagency collaboration, health communication, screening for contagious diseases, restriction, isolation and quarantine, contact tracing, immunisation programmes, epidemiological surveillance, and prison-specific guidelines in managing any outbreaks.

This study compares the effectiveness of 3 interventions implemented in a correctional facility to determine best practices for limiting the spread of COVID-19 to a vulnerable population. The 3 interventions include depopulation, increased single celling, and widespread testing of asymptomatic incarcerated individuals. Results were compared against a computer model designed to predict cases based on CDC guidelines only. Results indicated a possible 83% reduction in predicted symptomatic cases, hospitalizations, and deaths.

The onset of the pandemic created the need for multiple adaptations to the criminal justice system, including how to provide treatment for substance use disorder while in quarantine, how to continue opioid treatment for early release of individuals to the community, and how to limit the spread of COVID-19 in carceral facilities. Activities outlined in this general article include implementation of telehealth, restructuring group activities to limit exposure, medical quarantine, and connecting released individuals to community resources.

This article highlights the interventions taken by the Cook County Jail to reduce COVID-19 transmission. They used a combination of masking, testing, screening of staff, medical isolation in single-occupancy cells, social distancing, and enhanced cleaning procedures. Cases declined in the facility following these interventions, even as cases increased in the broader Chicago area.

This report examines decarceration as a public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic. People in correctional facilities are more susceptible to COVID-19 for a wide variety of reasons, including overcrowding and higher rates of pre-existing conditions. Public health agencies can advocate for these decarceration policies or participate directly in discharge planning or health care provision to these vulnerable populations.

This framework focuses on strategies and action steps recommended for health departments to enhance access to testing, quality care, and prevention methods in correctional/incarceration facilities. This resource opines that health departments, which often provide health care in carceral settings or contract private organizations to provide health care, should strengthen health care services for incarcerated people. All people, regardless of whether they are incarcerated, should have immediate access to testing, care, and the ability to protect themselves from disease.

Using public information, the researchers in this study constructed and analyzed a database of incarceration episodes in the city jail system, focusing on what happened March 23-29, 2020, immediately following the mayor’s order to release individuals incarcerated in New York City jails who were at high risk of contracting the disease and at low risk of committing criminal re-offense. They found that being discharged during the focus week was associated with a lower probability of readmission as compared to being discharged during the same calendar week in previous years. Furthermore, comparing the individuals discharged during the focus week of 2020 to those discharged during the same calendar week in previous years, they found that the former group was, on average, slightly older than the latter group, although the difference was not large. Additionally, the individuals in the former group had spent substantially longer in jail than those in the latter group.

This study examines the impact that COVID-19 has on incarcerated populations by analyzing systematic data on testing, test positivity, cases, and case fatality. Using data from the COVID Prison Project, the study presents data from 53 prison systems and compares these data with each state’s general population. Many states were not reporting full information on COVID-19 testing with some also not reporting on case fatality. Among those reporting data, there was wide variation between testing, test positivity, and case rates within prison systems and as compared to the general population. However, when more tests were deployed, more cases were identified, with the majority of state prisons having higher case rates than their general population.