Inmates Are a High Risk for COVID Transmission, but a Low Priority for Tennessee

Inmates Are a High Risk for COVID Transmission, but a Low Priority for Tennessee
A state panel won't prioritize prisoners for vaccination, fearing a ‘public relations nightmare'
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Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, which houses Tennessee’s death rowPhoto: Daniel Meigs
Associated Press reporters Kimberlee Kruesi and Jonathan Mattise were able to get a hold of documents showing that the state panel that decided what order Tennesseans get vaccinated in “acknowledged that prison inmates in the state were high-risk, but concluded that prioritizing them for inoculation could be a ‘public relations nightmare.’” And so inmates were ranked last for vaccines.
If we’re ranking nightmares, being trapped in a small cell in a long row of small cells stuffed with people while a deadly virus with as-yet-unknown long-term health implications passes through the prison seems like it would be way higher up on the list than “reporters had questions for me” and “I had to deal with some angry phone calls.” So you’d think we’d try to avoid the former much more than we avoid the latter.

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