British Columbia Provincial Corrections’ Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Case Study of Correctional Policy and Practice

ABSTRACT

Health and justice officials across North America have described correctional institutions as petri dishes for the transmission of COVID-19. Individuals in custody commonly have health profiles that are more compromised than those of the general population. Institutional infrastructure issues and custody counts that create barriers to protocols, including physical distancing measures, that health authorities recommend to limit the spread of the virus compound these profiles. Many correctional authorities have struggled to implement strategies to mitigate infection rates among custodial populations. This paper examines the strategies employed by one provincial correctional authority in Canada that has to date successfully prevented the spread of COVID-19 in custody centers by adopting a health-informed approach to the crisis rather than a traditional justice-informed response. The findings highlight practices that can inform the responses of other jurisdictions as the pandemic continues and identify areas of future research on the effects of COVID-19 on incarcerated persons, correctional and health-care staff, and communities.

KEYWORDS:

• Covid-19
• Pandemic
• Alternatives to incarceration
• Early release mechanisms
• Prison reform
• Prisons: prison resources
• incarceration rates
• public safety

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Drs Sheri Fabian and Curt Taylor Griffiths for their feedback on earlier drafts of this manuscript. The author would also like to thank Erin Gunnarson, Director, Policy and Programs, Strategic Operations Division, of BC Corrections for providing feedback about the Adult Custody Division’s response to the pandemic. Any errors are my own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. It is possible this testing rate includes multiple tests of the same person. Further, the rates were calculated using a one-day snapshot of the inmate population from May through July 01 2020 (Ouellet & Loiero, 2020).

2. It is possible this testing rate includes multiple tests of the same person. Further, the rates were calculated using a one-day snapshot of the inmate population from May through July 01 2020 (Ouellet & Loiero, 2020). As of August 7 2020, with a testing rate of 46,782 per 1,000,000, there have been only 3,934 total cases and 195 confirmed deaths in BC, which has a population of approximately five million (BC Centre for Disease Control, 2020c; BC Stats, 2020).

3. To learn more about how BC Corrections has responded to COVID-19 in the community setting, see: BC Corrections (2020a) and (2020b).

4. For further information about these suspensions, see: Supreme Court of British Columbia (2020) and The Provincial Court of British Columbia (2020).