Editor’s note: This commentary is by Daniel Felde, of Burlington, who is a senior at the University of Vermont studying political science.
With the first coronavirus vaccines set to arrive soon, Vermonters may be envisioning freedom. To some, freedom is a future of nightlife, dinner with friends, “normalcy.” To others, freedom is the promise of any future at all. As the vaccine is rolled out to the most vulnerable populations first, Vermont must prioritize the least free: people in prisons.
Throughout the U.S., prisons have been Covid hotspots. In fact, the five largest outbreaks in the country have been in prisons, not meatpacking plants or nursing homes. Three months ago, 185 (84%) of the 219 Vermonters incarcerated at a prison in Mississippi contracted Covid-19. A national study in August found that Vermont had the highest prison to state ratio of Covid cases out of any state. As the number of cases in Vermont surges, the 1,726 people detained and incarcerated by Vermont face an increasingly higher risk of contracting Covid. Once infected, the high rates of heart and lung conditions, mental illness, and substance use disorder among the prison population make the virus especially deadly. On average, the mortality rate is twice as high for people in prison than the general population after adjusting for sex, age, and race. Black people, who are at a heightened risk of both contracting and dying from Covid, constitute 9.5% of the prison population but only 1.4% of the state population. Vaccinating Vermonters in prison is therefore a major racial justice issue.
It is crucial that prioritizing incarcerated people includes Vermonters held in Mississippi. Vermont’s out-of-state contractor CoreCivic has not always been in lockstep with Vermont Department of Corrections policies. In April, the Vermont Prisoners’ Rights Office had to file a lawsuit against the DOC to push for additional Covid protection measures in the Mississippi facility. Keep in mind this was before the August outbreak. Clearly, it wasn’t enough.
The Vermont Department of Health will be looking to recommendations from the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices on how to identify priority groups to vaccinate. However, the ACIP prioritizes correctional officers (classified as essential workers), not incarcerated people in their phase I recommendations. If people experiencing incarceration are not included in the first phase of vaccinations, they may have to wait months for their turn.
It is no surprise that incarcerated people have been forgotten; prisons are institutions of societal amnesia and neglect. Once extracted from their communities, people incarcerated by Vermont have been sexually assaulted and denied medical care. Isolation in prison presents a dichotomy. Contact with outside family members and friends remains restricted: in-person visitations are off-limits and people are allowed two five-minute phone calls a week in addition to a weekly 25-minute video visitation. However, social contact within the prison is abundant, and shared living and eating spaces provide fertile ground for Covid to spread. The solution here is not months of increased social isolation, it is a vaccine.
If the Department of Corrections truly believes in the “inherent worth and dignity of all individuals,” it must fight for the vaccination of those it has incarcerated. If the Department of Health wants to pursue its mission to “protect and promote the best health for all Vermonters,” it must prioritize incarcerated people along with health care workers and those in long-term care facilities. Not only would this protect the health of incarcerated individuals but also, by preventing mass outbreaks, Vermont as a whole. If testing was the answer, then why won’t they simply be testing more in nursing homes during phase I? Because vaccines are the best technology we have to prevent the ravages of this virus. Our vaccination priorities show how we value life. I’m certainly looking forward to having my social circle vaccinated, but we must not forget people experiencing incarceration. They are parents, siblings, children, and friends too.
