COVID-19
and
Criminal Justice:
City and State Spotlights

Name: The Brand Industry
Price range: $

A humanitarian crisis is unfolding in jails and prisons around the country. While the vast majority of the U.S. population is taking extreme measures to limit their exposure to COVID-19, people behind bars are held in cramped conditions with no ability to protect themselves. A number of jails and prisons have already experienced rapid spread of infection. Without immediate decisive action, many more will follow. Authorities across the country must deploy all available measures to release people from custody. Here, we collect information for some of the nation's jail systems, providing tools to expedite release and track progress.

More spotlights coming soon

Kentucky

Jail Incarceration Rate by Urbanicity

Prison Population

Data Sources: Jail population data is collected by Vera. For complete jail data and sources, see the data on GitHub. Jail capacity data is from the Kentucky Department of Corrections’ Weekly Jail reports. COVID-19 case data is from the New York Times. Prison population data is from the Kentucky Department of Corrections’ Daily Count Sheets.

For more detailed data on county jail populations see Vera’s Kentucky Jail Data Dashboard.

Kentucky

Guidance on Handling Court Matters During COVID-19 Supreme Court directive and guidance for Kentucky judicial districts to safely reduce their jail populations and prevent spread of COVID-19 (Supreme Court of Kentucky)

Recommendations for the Kentucky Department of Corrections and the Kentucky Parole Board (The Department of Public Advocacy for the Commonwealth of Kentucky)

COVID-19 Response & Meeting the Needs of People in the Criminal Justice System (ACLU of Kentucky)

To Protect Kentuckians from COVID-19, State Needs to Build on Already Significant Declines in Incarceration (Kentucky Center for Economic Policy)

National

Protecting Rural Jails from Coronavirus Memo highlighting rising rural incarceration and the precarity of rural America’s social safety net and health infrastructure. (Data for Progress and the Justice Collaborative)

Coronavirus Tracker: How Justice Systems Are Responding in Each State Compare your county's COVID-19 population decreases to the changes in other counties. (The Marshall Project)
COVID–19 Incarceration ModelA data tool to model the spread and impact of COVID-19 among incarcerated people in different jurisdictions (Recidiviz)
Up-to-Date U.S. Prison and Jail Population (End Incarceration)
National Jail Population Database (Vera Institute of Justice)
COVID-19 Policy Shifts (Justice Collaborative)
Recommendations for Youth Justice Systems During the Covid-19 Emergency (Youth Correctional Leaders for Justice)
COVID-19 Law Enforcement Impact Dashboard (National Police Foundation)
COVID-19 Behind Bars
Resources for Correctional and Detention Facilities (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
Guidance briefs: Coronavirus Guidance for the Criminal and Immigration Legal Systems (Vera Institute of Justice)
Tracking COVID-19 Rates in Jails and Prisons (UCLA)

COVID-19 and Criminal Justice: City and State Spotlights

COVID-19
and
Criminal Justice:
City and State Spotlights

Jail Incarceration Rate by Urbanicity

Prison Population

News Digest

More Articles