ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2021
Carceral-community epidemiology, structural racism, and COVID-19 disparities.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 34 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
34 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Beyond Prison Walls: A Scoping Review of Incarceration's Public Health Impacts in Latin America.Wellcome open research · 2026Pooled it
- Transmission models of respiratory infections in carceral settings: A systematic review.Epidemics · 2025Pooled it
- The effectiveness of non-exposure to incarceration in preventing COVID-19 and mitigating associated events: a systematic review and meta-analysis.BMC public health · 2025Pooled it
- Structural interventions and policing in the United States: a scoping review of public health literature.BMC public health · 2026Article
- Reinforcement Learning-Based Control of Epidemics on Networks of Communities and Correctional Facilities.Medical decision making : an international journal of the Society for Medical Decision Making · 2026Article
- "We were on lockdown for pretty much my entire pregnancy": a qualitative study of pregnancy care in prisons and jails during the COVID-19 pandemic.BMC pregnancy and childbirth · 2025Article
- The role of epidemiologists in addressing the public health consequences of the United States criminal legal system.American journal of epidemiology · 2025Article
- Surveillance via wastewater monitoring and nasal self-collection of specimens (The SWANSS Study): a CFIR-informed qualitative study with key carceral and healthcare stakeholders.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Talking About Incarceration History: Engaging Patients and Healthcare Providers in Communication.Journal of general internal medicine · 2025Article
- COVID-19 Reproduction Numbers and Long COVID Prevalences in California State Prisons.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2024Article
- Development and Evaluation of Surveillance System for Identifying Jail-Associated COVID-19 Cases in Minnesota, USA, 2022.Emerging infectious diseases · 2024Article
- Excess tuberculosis risk during and following incarceration in Paraguay: a retrospective cohort study.Lancet regional health. Americas · 2024Article
- Enduring Injustice: Infectious Disease Outbreaks in Carceral Settings.The Journal of infectious diseases · 2024Article
- Psychological Burden of Systemic Racism-Related Distress in New York City Healthcare Workers During the COVID-19 Pandemic.Journal of general internal medicine · 2024Article
- Controlling COVID-19 outbreaks in the correctional setting: A mathematical modelling study.PloS one · 2024Article
- Facilitators and barriers to COVID-19 vaccination among incarcerated people and staff in three large, state prisons: a cross-sectional study.Health & justice · 2023Article
- Incarceration, menstruation and COVID-19: a viewpoint of the exacerbated inequalities and health disparities in South African correctional facilities.International journal of prisoner health · 2023Article
- Rates of SARS-CoV-2 transmission between and into California state prisons.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2023Article
- COVID-19 Burden in Adult Correctional or Detention Facilities and the Surrounding Communities, January 1, 2020-July 20, 2021.Journal of correctional health care : the official journal of the National Commission on Correctional Health Care · 2023Article
- Returning home during the pandemic: a thematic analysis describing experiences of people with substance use disorders released early from New Jersey prisons during COVID-19.Health & justice · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Black and Hispanic communities are disproportionately affected by both incarceration and COVID-19. The epidemiological relationship between carceral facilities and community health during the COVID-19 pandemic, however, remains largely unexamined. Using data from Cook County Jail, we examine temporal patterns in the relationship between jail cycling (i.e., arrest and processing of individuals through jails before release) and community cases of COVID-19 in Chicago ZIP codes. We use multivariate regression analyses and a machine-learning tool, elastic regression, with 1,706 demographic control variables. We find that for each arrested individual cycled through Cook County Jail in March 2020, five additional cases of COVID-19 in their ZIP code of residence are independently attributable to the jail as of August. A total 86% of this additional disease burden is borne by majority-Black and/or -Hispanic ZIPs, accounting for 17% of cumulative COVID-19 cases in these ZIPs, 6% in majority-White ZIPs, and 13% across all ZIPs. Jail cycling in March alone can independently account for 21% of racial COVID-19 disparities in Chicago as of August 2020. Relative to all demographic variables in our analysis, jail cycling is the strongest predictor of COVID-19 rates, considerably exceeding poverty, race, and population density, for example. Arrest and incarceration policies appear to be increasing COVID-19 incidence in communities. Our data suggest that jails function as infectious disease multipliers and epidemiological pumps that are especially affecting marginalized communities. Given disproportionate policing and incarceration of racialized residents nationally, the criminal punishment system may explain a large proportion of racial COVID-19 disparities noted across the United States.
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