An Examination of COVID-19 Outbreaks in South American Prisons and Jails

ABSTRACT

This article highlights intra-regional variation in the extent of the COVID-19 outbreaks in South America generally and then provides an assessment of the nature and extent of outbreaks in South American prisons. Country-level differences in front-end, within-prison, and back-end early release mechanisms are also described. The article concludes with an assessment of two alternative future directions for prison reform across this region.

KEYWORDS:

• international
• prisons
• corrections
• COVID-19
• Pandemic
• Alternatives to incarceration
• Early release mechanisms
• Prison reform

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. South American countries include Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Chile, Ecuador, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana, and, together, they account for 1,244,527 of the 10,911,380 inmates that comprise the total global prison population.

2. To calculate this proportion, we include Mexico with other Latin American countries, including South America, Central America and the Caribbean. North America’s COVID-19 total used in this comparison is based on data for the USA and Canada.

3. Further research on changes in Brazil’s death in prison rates – for any reason – will need to be conducted to investigate this suspected under-reporting issue.

4. For more information on Columbia’s response, see Marmolejo et al., this volume; and https://www.cgdev.org/publication/covid-19-colombia-impact-and-policy-responses.

5. Our own preliminary review of the available data comparing COVID-19 infection rates in prison versus the general community in the country-level reviews included in this special issue do not support this claim (see Marmolejo, this volume; Pitts and Inkpen, this volume; Ribeiro, this volume).

6. Chile and Peru also have the highest prevalence of testing among South American countries.

7. Agoff (this volume) argues that there are critical gender-specific differences in the impact of suspended prison visitation on males versus female inmates.