January 4th Update: On December 31st, the Illinois Department of Public Health released an updated COVID-19 Vaccination Plan, which prioritizes incarcerated people as part of Phase 1b, immediately after healthcare workers and people in long-term care facilities! This victory will hopefully prevent more unnecessary loss of life in jails and prisons across the state of Illinois and could not have happened without robust community support and action. Congratulations to all the advocates and organizers who made this happen!

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This morning, more than 60 advocacy and community organizations, university affiliates, and faith-based groups sent a letter to the Illinois Department of Public Health requesting that the state prioritize incarcerated people in its COVID-19 vaccination rollout plan. The letter outlines the importance of priority vaccine access to protect the uniquely vulnerable people in custodial settings, including the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC), Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice (IDJJ), county jails and juvenile detention centers (including those detained as part of immigration proceedings), the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center, locked treatment and detention facilities, and developmental and mental health centers operated by the state and associated staff.

Read the full text of the letter below. (Click here to view the letter as a PDF with citations.)

Re: Request that Incarcerated People Be Given Priority Access to the COVID-19 Vaccine

Dear Dr. Ezike: 

We are grateful for the leadership that IDPH continues to provide during the COVID-19  pandemic. We write today to ask that you ensure incarcerated people are given priority access to  the COVID-19 vaccine. Across the United States and specifically in Illinois, data has shown that  incarcerated individuals are among the populations most vulnerable to be infected with and die  from COVID-19. The Illinois Department of Public Health (“IDPH”) has already recognized  this vulnerability in your planning documents, and we applaud this recognition. The “COVID 19 Vaccination Plan” released by IDPH on December 4, 2020, however, indicates that the  priority status of incarcerated individuals and corrections staff has not yet been determined and  may be within Phase 2 or even Phase 3. We urge IDPH to follow the recommendations of  nationally renowned public health experts and prioritize all incarcerated individuals and  the staff who come in contact with them as part of Phase 1a for the COVID-19 vaccine  rollout plan—treating them with the same urgency as people in other long-term congregate  settings. 

In the above-mentioned COVID-19 Vaccination Plan, IDPH notes that it has adopted the  equitable framework developed by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and  Medicine (NASEM) in regards to which populations will receive the COVID-19 vaccine first. IDPH also noted in your plan that the status of priority populations is subject to change as more  is learned about the vaccine and affected populations. We ask that IDPH acknowledge the high  risk of COVID-19 exposure for people living in all forms of state custody and the staff who work  

with them and prioritize them for vaccinations. This includes people in the Illinois Department of  Corrections (IDOC), Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice (IDJJ), county jails and juvenile  detention centers (including those detained as part of immigration proceedings), the federal  Metropolitan Correctional Center, locked treatment and detention facilities, and developmental  and mental health centers operated by the state. People and staff in these congregate  environments should have the choice to receive the vaccine at the same time as nursing  home residents and others living in places where social distancing is difficult or impossible.  

When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended the prioritization of  long-term care residents, they did so based on science and research. Prioritizing those residents  is scientifically supported, implementation is feasible, and the choice aligns with the CDC’s  ethical values of (1) maximizing benefits and mitigating harms, (2) promoting justice, and (3)  reducing health inequities. Health experts from around the country have noted that this same  rationale applies to incarcerated people. Indeed, the ethical and equity concerns are even more  pressing for incarcerated individuals than they are for residents of long-term care facilities given  that they are disproportionately people of color and disproportionately subject to medical  vulnerabilities compared to the general population. 

Health experts have been unanimous in their calls for the prioritization of incarcerated people in  COVID-19 vaccination programs. The American Medical Association published a statement  calling for vaccinations for incarcerated people to be included “in the initial phases of  distribution.” The Johns Hopkins Center for Human Rights and Public Health published an open  letter that has hundreds of signatories from medical and public health experts across the nation,  urging that “people in carceral systems receive the same priority for receipt of a vaccine as both  their peers in other congregate settings, such as long-term care facilities, and staff working in the  facilities in which they are housed.” On December 16, public health experts from seven  nationally renowned universities (Brown, Columbia, Harvard, UNC-Chapel Hill, UCLA,  University of California-San Francisco, and Yale) published a research paper strongly  recommending that states “prioritize vaccine distribution to all incarcerated people at the same  stage as corrections officers (essential workers/first responders) or higher.”

According to the National Commission on COVID-19 and Criminal Justice, people in jail or  prison are four times as likely to be infected with coronavirus as the general population and twice  as likely to die from the infection. Jails and prisons are known to spread contagious diseases  quickly since individuals are confined to close quarters, are unable to social distance, have little  to no access to personal protective equipment, and lack easy access to hygiene products. In  Illinois prisons, 13.5% of incarcerated people are 55 and over, and thousands of people who are  vulnerable to COVID-19 because of age or health conditions are also detained in jails across the  state.  

Experts also urge states to recognize the unique challenges of vaccine distribution in custodial  settings and to draw on the expertise of medical and public health officials familiar with these  systems, and on incarcerated people themselves, to determine how to most effectively distribute  the vaccine. These experts emphasize that in many states, prisons and jails have consistently  been left out of COVID-19 response plans, leading to shortages in PPE, tests, and basic  sanitation supplies, while other institutions in the state were better resourced. We cannot let this  disparate treatment happen again.  

The lives of incarcerated people are just as important as other people’s lives. But unlike many  other people, they are fully dependent on the state to provide them with health care—in this case,  life-saving healthcare—and to protect them from exposure and harm that they cannot control.  Incarcerated people in Illinois have already fallen victim to some of the worst suffering  caused by the pandemic. The state must not neglect its duty to provide adequate health  resources to those in its care during the vaccine rollout process.  

In addition to the dangers to people inside, jails and prisons are also significant contributors to  community spread of COVID. Illinois is infamous for the damage caused by inaction during the  first wave of COVID-19 outbreaks in prisons and jails—particularly the one at Cook County Jail  last spring. Cook County Jail (CCJ) is one of the largest single-site jails in the country, detaining  over 5,500 people as of December 17, 2020. In April, the jail was named the “top U.S. hot spot”  for COVID-19 cases by The New York Times. Not only did the CCJ outbreak lead to seven  deaths and dozens of hospitalizations, it also exacerbated community transmission—especially in  communities of color. A study in the Journal of Health Affairs by Harvard and University of  Chicago researchers found that one in six cases in Chicago could be tied back to the outbreak at  Cook County Jail. A report released this week estimates that incarceration added over 500,000 additional infections nationally during summer 2020 alone. By providing incarcerated people  and staff priority access to the COVID-19 vaccine, we can go a long way toward protecting the  public health of everyone in Illinois. 

Guards and other staff are the primary pathways for the virus to enter facilities, and once the  virus hits the general population in jails and prisons, it is impossible to contain. In Cook County  Jail, only 38% of people are housed in single cells. The rest are either double-celled or in  dormitory settings with shared bathrooms and other facilities. Social distancing and other  methods of decreasing transmission are simply not possible or effective in a congregate setting  like a jail or prison. Currently, there are more people confirmed positive for COVID-19 (350  people) in Cook County Jail than at the height of the pandemic in the spring (307 people).  Since March, eight people in the custody of Cook County Jail have died from COVID-19. 

Isolation is the default infection prevention protocol inside custodial facilities. While people who  are incarcerated await vaccination, they do so largely in solitary confinement like conditions (via  quarantines and lockdowns) that put them at heightened mental health risk. People with mental  health conditions are overrepresented in jails and prisons, and the impact of isolation is  particularly severe on them. Confinement until the vaccine is available is also especially  injurious for adolescents in custody. 

In Illinois prisons, the number of infections are already staggering. There are over 1,200  imprisoned people who are currently positive for COVID-19, along with over 400 staff  members. Since the IDOC began publicly releasing data, the positivity rate for prisoners is  17.6%, higher than the general population in any of Illinois’ 11 regions. Overall, almost 6,000  imprisoned people and over 3,000 staff have contracted COVID since March. Dozens of  incarcerated people have died from contracting the virus in prisons, far from their homes,  families, and communities. Even more concerning as a matter of public health is the fact that our  prisons are mostly located in small downstate towns that lack the healthcare capacity to handle a  major outbreak. When there was a major outbreak in Stateville, the National Guard had to be called in to handle the surge in cases. As we vaccinate the country, offering the vaccine to  incarcerated individuals and staff members first can help avoid major shortages of hospital  beds in small communities with prisons and jails nearby.  

For Illinois to continue to be a national leader in containing the pandemic, we must distribute the  COVID-19 vaccine equitably and strategically. That requires including incarcerated people in the  first round. Six states (Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Maryland, and New  Mexico) have already explicitly included incarcerated people and the staff that work with them  in Phase 1 of their vaccine rollout plans. Given Illinois’ particularly dangerous experience  with COVID-19 outbreaks in jails and prisons in the spring and now, it is vital to update  Phase 1a of IDPH’s vaccination rollout plan to include incarcerated individuals.  Vaccinations of staff will not be enough to stop the spread of COVID-19 in correctional  facilities. COVID-19 outbreaks are currently raging through our prisons and jails; it is imperative  as a matter of fundamental human rights that we protect the lives of vulnerable individuals,  whom the state has sentenced to serve time in these facilities, by offering them the option of  COVID-19 vaccination as soon as possible.  

The signatories of this letter urge the Illinois Department of Public Health to assign incarcerated  individuals and corrections staff to Phase 1a of its vaccine rollout plan, so that we can avoid the  unnecessary loss of life that will continue if outbreaks in jails and prisons are not immediately  addressed.

Sincerely, 

A Just Harvest 

AFSC Chicago 

Believers Bail Out 

Black Lives Matter Chicago

BYP100 Chicago Chapter 

Cabrini Green Legal Aid 

Champaign County Bailout Coalition

Chicago 400 Alliance 

Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice

Chicago Community Bond Fund

Chicago Council of Lawyers

Chicago Freedom School 

Chicago Torture Justice Center

Chicago Tech Workers Coalition

Children and Family Justice Center

Clergy for a New Drug Policy

The Coalition to End Money Bond

Concerned Citizens of Precinct #12

Equip for Equality 

The Exoneration Project 

Faith Coalition for the Common Good

For the People Artists Collective

Free Write Arts & Literacy 

The Final 5 Campaign

First Defense Legal Aid 

The People’s Lobby 

FirstFollowers 

Hinda Institute 

Illinois NOW 

Illinois Prison Project 

Illinois Religious Action Center  of Reform Judaism (RAC-IL) 

John Howard Association 

Jolt Harm Reduction 

Legal Council for Health Justice Liberation Library 

Little Village Environmental Justice  Organization 

Loevy & Loevy, Attorneys at Law

Logan Square Neighborhood Association

Love & Protect 

Lucy Parsons Labs 

Mandel Legal Aid Clinic, University of  Chicago 

MediaJustice 

Moms United Against Violence &  Incarceration 

National Lawyers Guild of Chicago

Organized Communities Against  Deportation 

Parole Illinois 

Pilsen Alliance 

Project 1-11 

Restore Justice Illinois 

Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center at Northwestern University  Pritzker School of Law 

Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ)  Chicago 

Shriver Center on Poverty Law 

Silver Law Office PC 

Smart Decarceration Project – University of  Chicago 

Students for Sensible Drug Policy Global

Trinity United Church of Christ Chicago

Unitarian Universalist Advocacy Network  of Illinois 

Unitarian Universalist Prison Ministry of  Illinois 

United Congregations of the Metro East

United Working Families 

Uptown People’s Law Center 

Warehouse Workers for Justice 

Westside Justice Center 

Women’s Justice Institute 

Workers Center for Racial Justice