Coronavirus in prisons

Prisoners are far more likely to catch Covid-19 - but less likely to die from it

PRISONS are experiencing a much higher rate of infections from coronavirus than the national average. New figures from the Ministry of Justice suggest that you are more than four times as likely to catch the disease if you are in prison.

Between March and November, prisons in England and Wales saw a total of 8,201 Covid-19 infections - 1,026 infections for every 10,000 prisoners.

This figure uses the average prison population over the nine months, to account for the changing number of people being held.

That's more than quadruple the national rate of 236 infections for every 10,000 people across England and Wales - with 1.4 million cases confirmed in total by the end of November.

These figures are something of an oversimplification, as they don't take into account different demographics that can have an impact on infections.

However, they do give an indication that you're more likely to catch coronavirus in prison than you are outside of prison.

Joe Simpson, deputy general secretary of the Prison Officer Association, said: “Like the common cold, once coronavirus enters a prison it spreads like wildfire - for the simple reason that it's such a close community.

“You're packed in there with a lot of bodies for anything to go around very quickly.

“The prison service echoed the measures that were taken outside of prisons, but the problem came when they opened the prison back up.

“Now we have dozens of prisons with outbreaks because staff are coming in and out, and also interacting with their community like everyone else.

“The other factor was the courts were opened back up, which is why we decided to lock down again for a four week period and have asked the prison service to get together with our health and safety reps to look at how the virus is coming in.”

So far, 37 people are either suspected or confirmed to have died of coronavirus in prisons as of November – nearly five deaths for every 10,000 prisoners.

However, this is lower than the national average of 11 deaths for every 10,000 people in the UK, with 73,128 deaths seen across the UK with Covid-19 on the death certificate as of the end of November.

Despite the pandemic, the MoJ says that overall fewer prisoners died in the 12 months to September 2020 than died the previous year.

The low number of coronavirus deaths in prisons may be partly due to the fact that the prison population is generally much younger than the general population - and it is older people who are most at risk should they catch it.

Just 6% of prisoners are aged 60 and over, compared to 24% of people in England and Wales.

A prison service spokesperson said: “Without immediate, decisive action the virus would have threatened thousands of lives in prisons.

“Our carefully implemented measures - including shielding the vulnerable, rolling out mass testing and introducing safe regimes - have undoubtedly prevented many deaths and limited transmission in a uniquely challenging environment.”