Covid-19 Equity Task Force points to hurdles in expanding social distancing in corrections facilities

CORRECTIONS HOUSING

The Covid-19 Equity Response Team is a collective of over 50 individuals and organizations across New Hampshire representing multiple sectors and communities and was formed to address issues of equity arising from the pandemic and response and to provide guidance and advocacy on behalf of communities of concern in the state.

One subgroup of the Covid-19 Equity Task Force focuses on the experience of individuals in correctional settings. Given that correctional facilities are confined spaces and many states are experiencing large outbreaks in correctional settings, this subgroup has endeavored to conduct fact finding on conditions in New Hampshire and protect residents from contracting Covid-19.

As part of our fact-finding, we met with Commissioner Helen Hanks from the New Hampshire Department of Corrections. The commissioner has done an admirable job in implementing containment and mitigation measures despite stressful circumstances.

A clinician by training, her strategy to mitigate risks within the NHDOC facilities is informed by public health methods. As early as January, she and her team were screening for infections. NHDOC had a documented approach well before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued guidance for correctional settings, and to their credit, NHDOC had already embraced most of the CDC recommendations.

Those that they had not already enacted were quickly put into place. That said, there is more that could be done if certain barriers can be addressed.

The task force justice subgroup is particularly, though not exclusively, interested in safely reducing population within correctional facilities to increase the ability for physical distancing.

There are residents in the facilities who are eligible for administrative home confinement (AHC) who are not able to move through that process for lack of housing upon release because housing is a precondition of release to AHC. According to Commissioner Hanks, the number one barrier to moving eligible residents to AHC is the lack of housing.

While it can be said that New Hampshire has been in an affordable and available housing crisis for years, this is an often unseen or ignored dimension to this issue.

AHC reduces costs for DOC, and studies from California suggest housing improves reintegration and reduces recidivism. During a pandemic, AHC can reduce the population within the correction setting thus increasing physical distance, a key to mitigating spread. Now more than ever, community infrastructure is needed to support those exiting the correctional system.

Another confounding and profoundly relevant angle to this discussion is race.

It is well established now that people of color are having worse outcomes from Covid-19 as a result from social determinants of health. It is also well established that people of color make up a disproportionate portion of incarcerated people compared to their percent of the overall population.

NHDOC census data from June 2020 reveals that 7.3% of residents are Black despite being only 1.7% of New Hampshire’s population. This is so despite strong data dispelling the notion that people of color commit more crimes. By virtue of these facts, we have high-risk individuals in high-risk environments. We know too, from over two decades of paired testing or audits performed by the Urban Institute that people of color experience housing discrimination despite laws to the contrary and that discrimination is compounded if the housing seeker has children, disabilities, a criminal record or all of the above.

The cross-sectionality of race, incarceration, housing and Covid-19 compels us to find and enact solutions swiftly to reduce the risk of the spread of Covid-19 within correctional settings as has been experienced in many other states.

Editor’s note: The Covid-19 Equity Response Team is headed by Dr. Trinidad Tellez, director, New Hampshire Office of Health Equity. Other members are Bobbie Bagley, director of the state Division of Public Health & Community Services.

Kirsten Durzy, equity council lead, public health evaluation and narrative/storytelling expert, state Division of Public Health Services; Rogers Johnson, president, Seacoast NAACP and chair of the Governors Advisory Council on Diversity and Inclusion; and Dottie Morris, associate vice president for diversity and inclusion, Keene State College.