Please see my newest article in DIGBoston which is really horrific about the spread of COVID in Massachusetts prisons and jails. In a week we went from 11.5% to 14%. It begins:

“For the second time since March, Prisoners’ Legal Services (PLS) is arguing against the Massachusetts Department of Correction (DOC) in the uphill battle to depopulate state prisons.

Neither DOC officials nor Gov. Charlie Baker has put forth a plan to decarcerate despite litigation, legislation efforts, and soaring COVID cases in correctional populations. By Dec. 2, per a Special Master’s Report commissioned to fairly assess the situation from all angles, Mass prisons, jails, and houses of correction had four times the rate of infection as the general population of the Commonwealth.

While the number of COVID cases in the state has risen to 3.6% of the general population, a total of 1,864 out of 13,049 prisoners—a whopping 14%—have been infected with coronavirus since March. (As of this writing, in the houses of correction and jails it is actually 1 in 5.5 prisoners who have been infected.)”  MORE