Our Team
This community effort at UCI is a collaboration between members of the Criminology, Law and Society department, the Sociology department, the School of Social Ecology, and the School of Nursing. We are dedicated to educating the public, providing resources to those incarcerated and those recently released, and documenting the humanitarian crisis currently ravaging the state’s jails and prisons.
The project is spearheaded by Joanne DeCaro, Keramet Reiter, Gabe Rosales, Naomi Sugie, and Kristin Turney. If you have any questions or want to get in contact with us, please email: Gabe Rosales or Joanne DeCaro.
Our Mission
The current COVID-19 crisis has been especially detrimental to the roughly 241,000 people incarcerated through-out California’s jails, prisons, youth detention facilities, and immigration detention facilities. Unlike the majority of the state’s population–who are able to social distance and have access to masks and personal hygiene items–those who are incarcerated live in close quarters, have limited cleaning supplies, and interact regularly with correctional officers (who may bring COVID-19 from their communities).
Many times when incarcerated people become infected, they are placed in solitary confinement with limited access to showers, hand sanitizer, and proper treatment. The incarcerated population’s safety is solely at the whim of correctional staff, as potential infection from programming and visitations came to a grinding halt in March due to potential infection.
The general public is unaware of the dire circumstances that characterize our state’s correctional institutions, as these institutions are petri dishes for highly contagious viruses like COVID-19. The prison population is at a 450% higher risk of contracting the virus than those in the state overall. Carceral institutions are also lacking proper medical treatment, and incarcerated people many times need to be treated in local community hospitals outside of prisons, contributing to already impacted intensive care units across the state.
These issues behind jail and prison walls are not isolated. They must be addressed in the most humane, logical and safe manner to ensure the safety of those incarcerated and the wider community.