As the Pandemic Swept America, Deaths in Prisons Rose Nearly 50 Percent

Amid a debate in 2021 about reducing sentences for good behavior, Dana Nessel, Michigan’s attorney general, a Democrat, argued in an opinion piece in the Detroit News that changing the law would undermine efforts to “provide victims and the community a sense of security and stability.”

A Health Care Crisis

Current and former inmates interviewed by The Times, as well as advocacy groups, said poor health care was a major factor in prison deaths. They described systems in which prisoners were charged for seeing a doctor, though many of them found it hard to afford. And when inmates received an appointment, they said, medical staff viewed them with suspicion.

“Doctors or providers will think a patient is malingering or somehow exaggerating their symptoms,” said Andrea Armstrong, a law professor at Loyola University in New Orleans who has been documenting and researching deaths in Louisiana prisons.

Correctional facilities have a hard time attracting nurses and doctors — a problem exacerbated during the pandemic, when it was also difficult to transport people to appointments outside the prison, and when fears of contracting Covid led to absenteeism among prison staff.

Some patients who died in 2020 had seen their health decline for years.

At Huttonsville Correctional Center in West Virginia, Robbie Campbell had been complaining of severe constipation and rectal bleeding since the beginning of 2016, according to medical records contained in a lawsuit. Mr. Campbell, a former coal miner who pleaded guilty to murder in 2010, had submitted multiple requests for medical care, but he was taken to the hospital only in June 2017 after he passed out from a loss of blood. He was diagnosed with colon cancer and died in 2020.

Mark Trammell, who was incarcerated in Lieber Correctional Institute in South Carolina, caught Covid-19 while being treated for liver cancer, after going years before receiving treatment for hepatitis C that he had contracted in prison, according to state records and his family and friends. He died in June 2020 after serving more than 40 years for voluntary manslaughter.

Not Enough Workers

For years, prisons throughout the country were seen as a boon in rural areas, where they were major employers. But towns that once served as recruiting grounds for correctional officers have been gutted by population declines, and prison jobs — with their low wages and potential dangers — have become less of a draw.