People who are incarcerated have high rates of COVID-19 infection and death compared to the general population. Correctional facilities are overcrowded, poorly ventilated, and disproportionately populated by people with preexisting conditions. By August 2020, 90 of the 100 largest COVID-19 clusters in the United States had occurred in prisons and jails. The racist origins of the criminal legal system have created an overrepresentation of Black, Indigenous, and people of color in correctional facilities, further exacerbating health inequities in these communities.
Given the increased risk of COVID-19 among people who are incarcerated, it is imperative to vaccinate people in US prisons as soon as possible. But although experts have called to urgently vaccinate people behind the walls, the number of people who have received vaccinations in correctional facilities remains opaque. Few systems publish any data on COVID-19 vaccinations in corrections, and no government infrastructure exists to track the rollout of vaccinations in corrections nationally. Among states that do publicly report vaccination counts, rates of vaccinations in corrections vary widely across states. This has major implications for our understanding of if and when people who are incarcerated have access to the vaccine, which in turn has an impact on our ability to mitigate outbreaks in carceral settings and surrounding communities.
We obtained vaccination counts from the COVID Prison Project, a public-facing database that provides real-time data on COVID-19 transmission within all 50 state prison systems, the federal Bureau of Prisons, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and in Puerto Rico. As no uniform standards for data collection exist across correctional facilities, data were recorded by COVID Prison Project in the form that they are presented. For example, systems may present vaccination data as the total numbers who have received one vaccination, the total who have received two vaccinations, or by unique individuals who have received any vaccination. Historical data summarize the number of individuals who are incarcerated who have received >1 vaccination, the number of staff who have received >1 vaccination, and the number of unspecified staff or people who are incarcerated who have received >1 vaccination.

The United States’ manifestation in the epidemic is ashamed. More than 500,000 people died. The United States left the epidemic uncontrolled