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The USA has a rapidly aging prison population that, combined with their poorer health and living conditions, is at extreme risk for COVID-19. The purpose of this paper is to compare COVID-19 mortality trends in the US prison population and the general population to see how mortality risk changed over the course of the pandemic. The authors first provide a national overview of trends in COVID-19 mortality; then, the authors assess COVID-19 deaths among older populations using more detailed data from one US state.

The authors used multiple publicly available data sets (e.g. Centers for Disease Control and prevention, COVID Prison Project) and indirect and direct standardization to estimate standardized mortality rates covering the period from April 2020 to June 2021 for the US and for the State of Texas.

While 921 COVID-19-related deaths among people in US prisons were expected as of June 5, 2021, 2,664 were observed, corresponding to a standardized mortality ratio of 2.89 (95%CI 2.78, 3.00). The observed number of COVID-19-related deaths exceeded the expected number of COVID-19-related deaths among people in prison for most of the pandemic, with a substantially widening gap leading to a plateau about four weeks after the COVID-19 vaccine was introduced in the USA. In the state population, the older population in prison is dying at younger ages compared with the general population, with the highest percentage of deaths among people aged 50–64 years.

People who are incarcerated are dying of COVID-19 at a rate that far outpaces the general population and are dying at younger ages.

This descriptive analysis serves as a first step in understanding the dynamic trends in COVID-19 mortality and the association between age and COVID-19 death in US prisons.

Vaccinating adults who are involved with the carceral system, particularly those aged 55 or older, is crucial to containing the COVID-19 pandemic in the USA, particularly as variants continue to emerge and spread. In this Viewpoint, the authors discuss the reasons why improving access to COVID-19 vaccine and boosters among community supervised adults, especially the aging population, is critical to mitigating the public health consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. This study concludes by providing recommendations to enhance vaccine and booster uptake in this population, as the pandemic continues.

This is a Viewpoint paper regarding mitigating the spread of COVID-19 by improving access to vaccine and boosters among community supervised adults, especially the aging population.

A key population that has been overlooked in vaccination efforts are older adults involved in the carceral system who are living in the community (i.e. “community supervised” or people on probation or parole). Older adults on probation and parole are at high risk for SARS-CoV-2 transmission and severe disease due to numerous factors at the individual, community, social and structural levels.

Implementation of recommendations presented in this Viewpoint will mitigate COVID-19 risk among a population that has been marginalized and overlooked, yet has been the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the course, “Designing Education for Better Prisoner and Community Health,” which provided students with the knowledge, skills and resources needed to build real-world health education materials for persons who are criminal justice involved.

A multiphase engaged scholarship course was designed and implemented through the Brown University School of Public Health in Rhode Island, USA.

Students collaborated closely with instructors, subject matter experts and affected community members to develop highly tailored health education projects across six topic areas. The structure and outcomes of the paper are described with the hope that other instructors and institutions might replicate components of the model.

Engaged scholarship in public health can provide students with rich, collaborative learning experiences, and when executed effectively, these endeavors can provide underserved communities with robust and informed health education interventions and programs.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss overdose among those with criminal justice experience and recommend harm reduction strategies to lessen overdose risk among this vulnerable population.

Strategies are needed to reduce overdose deaths among those with recent incarceration. Jails and prisons are at the epicenter of the opioid epidemic but are a largely untapped setting for implementing overdose education, risk assessment, medication assisted treatment, and naloxone distribution programs. Federal, state, and local plans commonly lack corrections as an ingredient in combating overdose. Harm reduction strategies are vital for reducing the risk of overdose in the post-release community.

Therefore, the authors recommend that the following be implemented in correctional settings: expansion of overdose education and naloxone programs; establishment of comprehensive medication assisted treatment programs as standard of care; development of corrections-specific overdose risk assessment tools; and increased collaboration between corrections entities and community-based organizations.

In this policy brief the authors provide recommendations for implementing harm reduction approaches in criminal justice settings. Adoption of these strategies could reduce the number of overdoses among those with recent criminal justice involvement.

The purpose of this paper is to present a case study of leadership religiosity in a local non-profit organizational setting, from a larger program evaluation project, and to problematize prevailing theoretical assumptions in the leadership religiosity literature about the nature of religion in organizational settings.

Methods of data collection consisted primarily of in-depth interviewing, observations, and document content analysis of organizational publications, web sites, and social media. The larger program evaluation project also utilized social network analysis and surveys.

The data highlights several important manifestations of leadership religiosity that serve to legitimate potentially unhealthy leadership tendencies and organizational processes: unrealistic future goals in strategic planning and dogmatic decision making. Both stem from the perceived divine origination of the organization in question, and from the perceived divine authority placed upon the leader of the organization.

This research challenges prevailing theoretical assumptions about religion in the workplace that characterize “religion” as wholly distinct from other social, political, and organizational processes and inherently positive or beneficial. Conclusions about the potential benefits of religion for organizational life should therefore be made with caution and with a more robust and balanced understanding of the constructed nature of religion.

This paper adds much-needed nuance to the extant literature on leadership religiosity, the vast majority of which assumes certain a priori qualities and values in religion and considers only the positive manifestations and functions of religion. While religiosity is often associated with certain organizational benefits, more robust discussion must examine the potential for religion to be manifested or used in the service of more negative or harmful purposes and ends.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a historical overview of compassionate release policies in the USA and describe how these policies have been used during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors then describe how these programs have been shaped by COVID-19 and could be reimagined to address the structural conditions that make prisons potentially life limiting for older adults and those with chronic illness.

This paper is primarily descriptive, offering an overview of the history of compassionate release policies before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors augmented this description by surveying state Departments of Corrections about their utilization of compassionate release during 2019 and 2020. The findings from this survey were combined with data collected via Freedom of Information Act Requests sent to state Departments of Corrections about the same topic.

The findings demonstrate that while the US federal prison system saw a multifold increase in the number of individuals released under compassionate release policies in 2020 compared to 2019, most US states had modest change, with many states maintaining the same number, or even fewer, releases in 2020 compared with 2019.

This paper provides both new data and new insight into compassionate release utilization during the COVID-19 pandemic and offers new possibilities for how compassionate release might be considered in the future.