State prison systems are grappling with chronic understaffing and overcrowding, dual crises that are keeping incarcerated people confined to their cells far longer than in recent decades.
Lockdowns are common in jails and prisons, but usually last only a few hours or days. During lockdowns, access to rehabilitative classes, religious activities, work and visitation is limited or suspended.
Prisoners on lockdown can lose their usual routines, which may include exercise, calls to loved ones and other structured activities. Meals are typically eaten inside cells, further isolating inmates.
Recent lockdowns have been extended for weeks or even months at many facilities suffering staff shortages, Stateline reports.
“What’s unusual here is that you’ve got these more sustained lockdowns,” said Michele Deitch of the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at the University of Texas at Austin. “People are not in that situation because of disciplinary reasons. They’re in there for the convenience and management of the institution.”
In some states, lockdowns have intensified tensions within prison walls, contributing to violence between incarcerated people and staff, increased drug use and deaths by suicide.
The Green Bay Correctional Institution in Wisconsin resumed normal operations in July after being on lockdown for more than a year. As of Nov. 29, the facility housed 1,080 people, nearly 45% above its designed capacity of 749. The Waupun Correctional Institution, also in Wisconsin, has been under some form of lockdown for more than a year.
In Texas, some facilities operate with a 70% corrections officer vacancy rate, meaning those prisons are trying to maintain security with fewer than half the officers they need, according the Sunset Advisory Commission, a legislative agency tasked with evaluating state departments.
The evaluation came after a statewide prison lockdown that lasted just over a month last year, prompted by a rise in contraband and drug-related homicides among inmates.
Several states have enacted laws aimed at cracking down on violent crimes, drug-related crimes, retail theft and other crimes that could send more people to prison. The states include Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Louisiana, Oregon and Tennessee.
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