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Solitary Confinement During COVID-19 is a Human Rights Emergency

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Graphic reading: More than 300,000 people are being tortured in prolonged solitary confinement. The COVID-19 death rate in federal and state prisons is 3x higher than the general population. The CDC must act – now.

Today, NCTE joined a coalition of more than 100 medical experts, human rights organizations, and faith-based organizations in issuing a carta calling on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to revise its current guidance for adult and juvenile correctional facilities to both slow the high rate of COVID-19 transmission, and ensure effective compliance with existing guidelines. Specifically, the letter calls on the CDC to issue guidelines restricting the use of punitive and prolonged solitary confinement as a form of pandemic response at the federal, state and local levels. Transgender people are often held in solitary confinement.

 

The number of people held in prolonged solitary confinement has increased by an estimated 500 por ciento in U.S. prisons, jails, and detention centers since the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic. The increase comes after years of slow but steady declines in the number of people estimated to be held in these conditions. According to the United Nations, the use of solitary confinement for more than 15 days can amount to torture, and the practice should be severely restricted, especially for pregnant people, children and people suffering from serious mental illness.

 

Numerous medical experts and public health officials have repeatedly warned that solitary confinement exacerbates the spread of the virus, and is not an effective form of pandemic response. Más de 1,000 incarcerated individuals have already died of COVID-19, and jails and prisons make up more than 90 por ciento of the nation’s top pandemic hotspots.

 

The coalition’s letter calls for the CDC’s swift implementation of the following five measures:

 

  1. Issue clear guidance to local, state and federal corrections officials, judges, and law enforcement agencies on reducing adult and juvenile jail and prison intakes and population size to reduce the spread of COVID-19.
     
  2. Issue public health guidelines distinguishing “solitary confinement” from “quarantine” and “medical isolation” to prevent punitive conditions for those who contract COVID-19.
     
  3. Assemble a formal CDC working group on COVID-19 and prisons.
     
  4. Segregate suspected and documented COVID-19 patients from the general correctional population.
     
  5. Make soap and hand sanitizer freely accessible to all people incarcerated and working in correctional facilities, and make gloves mandatory for all staff. 

The coalition’s letter highlights a 2020 de junio informe by Unlock the Box that details the myriad ways in which under-prepared state and federal corrections officials have failed to develop comprehensive plans for containing the spread of COVID-19 inside their facilities. The report shows that in addition to prolonged solitary confinement becoming the default pandemic response in many prison systems across the United States to COVID-19, there has also been a systematic failure to institute basic public health measures that could actually prevent the virus’s spread inside these facilities. These include targeted and safe depopulation efforts that would reduce overcrowding and make effective social distancing easier and more effective. Many jails and prisons have also failed to provide critical personal protective equipment, or enough basic sanitization supplies such as hand sanitizer or soap. 


“There is an ongoing and accelerating humanitarian crisis occurring in jails and prisons across the nation, and public officials have a legal, ethical and moral obligation to adopt and implement safe and effective strategies in response to COVID-19,” said Jessica Sandoval, Campaign Strategist for the Unlock the Box Campaign. “It is well past time for the CDC to listen to the warnings of medical experts, human rights watchdogs and public health professionals by issuing clear and consistent guidelines restricting the use of solitary confinement and system-wide lockdowns in response to this pandemic. These tactics are proven to be dangerous and ineffective, and with the number of cases quickly rising, we are on the verge of a deeper crisis of unprecedented size and scale.”

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