Take Action: People in Prison Should be Prioritized for COVID Vaccine

Write to the CDC asking them to revise their guidelines for vaccine distribution.

As we pointed out in a recent commentary, prisons across the United States remain some of the worst hotspots for the spread of COVID-19. Yet, when the CDC issued guidelines as to who should be prioritized in the distribution of coronavirus vaccines, inmates were strikingly absent from the list. Some politicians have even gone so far as to explicitly state that prisoners should be left off the list of early recipients.

This position is wrong both morally and legally. Prisoners are uniquely vulnerable to COVID-19, due to the fact that they are often held in close quarters where the virus can spread easily. Moreover, they are at the mercy of the government in a way that other members of society are not. In prisons, state or federal authorities exercise control over every aspect of inmates' lives. The government therefore has a special obligation to ensure that prisoners receive prompt and full medical care and do not suffer from preventable diseases.

The government may deprive people of their liberty in some circumstances, but the penalties it imposes cannot exceed the sentence set by courts. Trapping people in conditions where they are needlessly exposed to a deadly virus would certainly go far beyond the limits of a just and proportionate sentence. As such, it would amount to "cruel and unusual punishment," which the U.S. Constitution forbids.

For these reasons, people in prison should be among the categories of people at the top of the list for vaccine distribution, so that they may—if they freely choose—protect themselves from the virus. (No vaccines or any other medical treatments should be forced on people in government custody.) The same reasoning applies to people in immigration detention. Members of these populations should also be released on humanitarian parole or transferred to home-based alternatives to detention wherever possible.

In its initial list of vaccine priorities, the CDC wisely includes nursing home staff and residents, as well as health care workers. The meeting notes from the advisory panel that made the recommendations also correctly list other frontline workers (including food distribution, corrections officers, and transportation workers) as part of a secondary phase of the initial vaccine rollout. While these notes list corrections officers among early vaccine recipients, however, they do not name the people these officers interact with every day, and whose safety often rests in their hands: namely, prison inmates.

The CDC's list is the right place to start; but it should be expanded to include people in prisons and detention centers across the country. Email the CDC here or write to them at 1600 Clifton Road, Atlanta, GA 30329 USA to let officials know what decency and compassion demand: these populations should be among the groups prioritized for vaccine distribution.