As the COVID-19 pandemic has worsened, the infection has spread to, within, and from jails and prisons across the United States. Prisoners and their families and advocates have attempted to persuade and compel officials to follow better health practices within incarcerative facilities–to improve sanitation, access to medical care, availability of personal protective equipment, social distancing, and the like. They have also sought both individual and mass releases, of people who are especially medically vulnerable and others. The goal has been to reduce the risk to people for whom COVID-19 illness is likely to be particularly dangerous, and to depopulate jails and prisons sufficiently to facilitate “social distancing” behind bars and reduce the spread of the infection.
This page brings together resources about COVID-19 and jails and prisons. There are links to case documents, news coverage, release requests and decisions, best practices, and more.
We’ll update the page frequently, and will try to post a casebook supplement for teaching related to the pandemic.
Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse COVID-19 Collection. Summarizes and posts documents from dozens of civil rights cases related to COVID-19. A project of Margo Schlanger and the University of Michigan Law School.
Bonnie Tenneriello is Solitary Confinement Project Director and a Senior Attorney with Prisoners’ Legal Services of Massachusetts. Much of her litigation has focused on solitary confinement, including the pending case Evelyn v. DOC, which challenges the Massachusetts DOC’s evasion of solitary confinement reform. She has also written on this topic for the Boston Review. Recent litigation also includes Doe v. Mici, which challenges the use of prisons to house people civilly committed for substance use disorder. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Massachusetts Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. |
