COVID-19 Behind Bars: A Pandemic of Neglect

Homer Venters has been inspecting prisons, jails, and ICE detention centers for COVID-compliance almost since the start of the pandemic. The former chief medical officer for New York City jails says what were already substandard health systems and abusive environments have deteriorated sharply, where even people positive for the virus can languish unseen for days. Any fix to health care behind bars, he says, has to start with listening to the people these facilities have worked to silence: those with lived experience of the conditions. Full show notes Listen back to Venters’s New Thinking interview, ‘Jail-Attributable Deaths’