Inmates

Introduction

Have incarcerated people been looked over in the national vaccine conversation because they are unimportant to vaccination effort or because of systemic bias against them?

Arguments in Favor

Incarcerated people aren't necessarily the first group we consider as vaccine priority groups, but from a scientific standpoint, their prioritization makes sense. As Emily Bazelon argues in a New York Times article, prisons constitute the same congregated living spaces as do nursing homes, which explains why prisoners are four times as likely to become infected than the average person. Inmates often have no choice to mask and distance, meaning that outbreaks spread rapidly inside prisons. Those outbreaks have consequences not just inside the walls of the prisons, but in communities as well: corrections officers, visitors, and released people can spread the virus beyond cell walls (Bazelon).

Bazelon argues that the reason why nursing homes are prioritized under CDC recommendation and prisons are not is due to systemic bias against the incarcerated, an argument that absolutely has merit.

Arguments Against

There are some pressing issues when it comes to prioritizing prisoners, most of which stem back to that infallible truth of public confidence and buy-in to a vaccine program being the only thing that gives that program any worth at all. If non-incarcerated people feel like they're being "stiffed" or "cheated" out of a vaccine because the government has chosen to prioritize people who have broken the law, that creates some real and serious challenges to public buy-in.

Local Policy

North Carolina is planning to prioritize the incarcerated in vaccine distribution (Bazelon).

My Take on a Solution

Inmates should be prioritized for a vaccine, but not alongside nursing home residents. Having prisoners get vaccinated before essential workers would constitute too great of a hit to public confidence in the United States's vaccination program to be feasible or realistic. The best balance with regards to preventing outbreaks and maintaining public trust would be to prioritize inmates at the same time or slightly after essential workers, which would align with the consideration of corrections officers as "essential" because their jobs, which entail working in a congregate setting, place them at high risk.