Forgotten Behind Bars: COVID-19 and Prisons

The spread of COVID-19 in prisons and other detention facilities has thrown into stark relief systemic threats to health in detention such as overcrowding and poor sanitary conditions and laid bare years of underinvestment and neglect of health services in prisons. Against this backdrop, this report summarizes a review of 69 governments’ response to COVID-19 in detention facilities. It concludes that the measures governments have introduced to prevent the spread of COVID-19 have often been inadequate and, in some cases, have themselves led to human rights violations.