Incarcerated Youth and COVID-19: Notes from the Field

Abstract

On a Sunday morning in April 2020, as the novel coronavirus wreaked havoc across the nation, eighteen-year-old Nathaniel woke up with a pounding headache and 103-degree fever. Within hours, he began to feel chest pains, developed a cough, and had trouble breathing, a particularly alarming symptom in light of his lifelong history of asthma. He needed medical attention, quickly.

But Nathaniel could not simply call his doctor or go to an emergency room. He is incarcerated in one of New Jersey’s youth prisons, and his story throws open a window to the pandemic’s particularly harsh impact on the lives of children behind bars.

Tragically, Nathaniel’s experience with the virus reflects those of incarcerated people throughout the United States. According to weekly data collected by the Marshall Report, 249,093 adults in prisons and jails have tested positive for COVID-19, and at least 1,647 have died—an infection rate that surpasses that of the general population by more than 228 percent. In New Jersey—an epicenter of this sub-pandemic—fifty-two incarcerated adults have died, among the top ten highest inmate mortality rate in the country, and more deaths than in twenty other states combined.

Much media attention has focused on the devastating consequences of the pandemic on incarcerated adults in the U.S., but the virus also has run rampant in youth prisons and detention centers. This essay examines the pandemic's incalculable harms on young people in custody through the lens of the lived experiences of incarcerated adolescents in New Jersey; the pandemic's exacerbation of racial disparities within the juvenile legal system; and the multi-pronged advocacy strategies - - judicial, legislative, and regulatory - - employed throughout the year in an effort to keep them safe.