Across the country and the world, communities are working feverishly to measure the coronavirus pandemic’s impact—struggling with shortages of tests and depleted health care capabilities to gauge the numbers of the infected, the sick, and the dead. Accurate data is the first vital step in understanding the scope of the problem and developing and calibrating the best response. But, as the world moves to lockdown and social isolation, what is happening to the approximately 2.3 million people behind bars in the United States and to the tens of thousands who work in those facilities—line officers, administrators, nurses, therapists, doctors? Harvard Kennedy School Professor of Public Policy Marcella Alsan and Harvard Law School Professor of Law Crystal Yang have teamed up with the National Commission on Correctional Health Care (NCCHC) to conduct the first detailed survey on the coronavirus pandemic’s impact on the country’s prisons, jails, and juvenile detention facilities. We ask them about their groundbreaking work, what it tells us about the spread and treatment of the disease among some of the most vulnerable populations, and how this valuable data can guide practitioners and policymakers.
Alsan and Yang are faculty affiliates of the Kennedy School’s Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy. They are both economists. Alsan also has degrees in medicine and public health, and has held hospital fellowships in global health equity and infectious disease. Yang served as a federal prosecutor and is also a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Q: How did you both come to find yourself working with the NCCHC as the pandemic struck?
Bottom: Marcella Alsan
Yang: Marcella and I are both economists who are interested in using policy to improve outcomes for vulnerable and underrepresented populations. We have been collaborators for some time on issues at the intersection of the criminal justice system and the health care system. We each bring a complementary skill set to the table, with Marcella’s dual training in medicine and economics and my dual training in law and economics. Prior to the start of the pandemic, we had partnered with the NCCHC to better understand the unique health care needs of incarcerated populations and the role tha