Like nursing homes, each of these institutions relies heavily on federal funds. They have also been repeatedly responsible, since the beginning of the pandemic, for many of the biggest COVID-19 outbreaks in the world. Not only has this reality harmed incarcerated people, but for 18 months, COVID-19 has also been by far the greatest threat to the safety of police and prison guards. At least 114,000 prison workers have gotten COVID-19, more than triple the rate of illness seen in the general population. In spite of this, prison administrators have failed to successfully achieve high rates of vaccination among their staff; in most states that report these data, less than 50 percent of prison staff have reported getting a shot.

Likewise, police officers across the United States have refused en masse to receive a vaccine. Although comprehensive data are difficult to come by, as many departments are refusing to track or report their employees’ vaccination rates, the majority of police officers in large U.S. cities (including Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles) remain unvaccinated, and rural police departments are likely to have even less vaccine uptake. This is despite abundant opportunity, after police unions advocated for early access to the vaccines, which the CDC appropriately granted to both police and prison staff while conspicuously neglecting incarcerated people, who are at even greater risk.

These especially high rates of vaccine refusal by public employees who ostensibly serve in the interest of public safety put incarcerated populations and overpoliced communities of color at continued, preventable risk of COVID-19 outbreaks.