Katherine LeMasters and Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein raise concerns about the lack of sustained change in prison health transparency after covid-19 and implications for future public health crises
People in the jails and prisons across the United States are often housed in abysmal and unlawful conditions that have dire consequences for health.1 From poorly designed built environments (eg, lack of air conditioning, overcrowded dorms) to stressful and unpredictable living quarters, to a lack of quality and timely healthcare, time spent in incarceration worsens peoples’ health.23 In fact, the American Public Health Association considers the current state of incarceration in the US to be a public health crisis.4 Rates of incarceration are high. Although the US contains less than 5% of the global population, it accounts for 20% of the global incarcerated population.5 Furthermore, incarceration disproportionately affects Black, Native American, and Latino people, contributing to racial health inequities.6
Despite the problems of mass incarceration, it is not monitored like other public health crises in the US.7 For instance, there is no real time or comprehensive health data reporting from the country’s 53 disaggregated prison systems (50 state prison systems, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Puerto Rico, and the national Immigrations and Customs Enforcement). These data are critical for understanding prison population dynamics (eg, when and how many people are dying in custody), quantifying health inequities (eg, rates of infectious disease spread in prisons versus the general population), and documenting how incarceration is affecting chronic health conditions. Only with these real time, comprehensive data can we work toward improving the health and wellbeing of individuals and communities affected by mass incarceration. In this article, part of a BMJ series examining US covid-19 lessons (http://bmj.com/collections/uscovid- series), we examine how despite the problems of mass incarceration, it is not monitored …