The new death penalty: Marshall Project reporting COVID has now killed more than 2000 prisoners in the United States

I am always sad to report when we pass yet another remarkable milestone in COVID prisoner deaths, but passing a new big ugly number prompts another one of my series of “new death penalty” posts.  The Marshall Project, which continues the critical job of counting via this webpage prisoner deaths from coronavirus, reports as of Thursday, January 8, 2021 that there are now “at least 2010 deaths from coronavirus reported among prisoners.” 

Notably, just a month ago as noted in this post, the COVID prisoner death accounting was “only” at 1568 deaths.  So we have seen a huge uptick in prisoner deaths in just the last month (which is somewhat unsurprising because the same uptick has been seen in the general population).   Sadly, we are also seeing a big increase in correctional staff dying from COVID.  The Marshall Project now reports “at least 139 deaths from coronavirus reported among prison staff,” when that number was “only” at 105 deaths as of last month. 

I highlighted here a few weeks ago some of the sound arguments being made that incarcerated persons should be high on the list of who first receives the COVID vaccines.  These latest data should further advance that notion.

A few of many prior related posts:

• The new death penalty: COVID has now killed in nine months more US prisoners than capital punishment over last 50+ years (from Dec. 2020)
• The new death penalty: COVID has now killed more US prisoners than capital punishment over last three decades (from Nov. 2020)
• The new death penalty: COVID has now killed as many US prisoners as has a quarter century of capital punishment (from Oct 2020)
• The new death penalty: COVID has now killed more US prisoners in months than the US death penalty has in the last two decades (from Aug 2020)
• The new death penalty: COVID has now killed more US prisoners in weeks than the US death penalty has in over a decade (from May 2020)
• The new death penalty: COVID has now killed more than 500 US prisoners and prison staff according to UCLA Law data (from May 2020)
• The new death penalty: COVID now a leading modern killer of California inmates on death row 
• From drug sentences to death sentences: documenting arbitrary and capricious drug war casualties
• Memorializing more drug war casualties: updating the federal drug sentences that COVID-19 turned into death sentences