“COVID-19 is terrifying for those who live and work inside prisons, their families and the broader community. Governments have moved sluggishly, if at all, to release elderly and medically compromised people, or sufficient numbers of the nearly 800,000 people who are locked in crowded jails each day simply because they can’t afford to pay bail,” wrote Heather Ann Thompson PSC Research Affiliate and professor of history.

More about Thompson examines the COVID-19 crisis in US jails and prisons, echoing the 1990s tuberculosis outbreak and policy errors >