Prison outbreak adds urgency to warnings of the Covid virus spreading through the incarcerated population
As the numbers of Omicron cases in the community build to a concerning crescendo, it may have been only a matter of time before the coronavirus was found in a prison.
Those fears were realised over the weekend, with Serco reporting an outbreak within the walls of a South Auckland prison, causing a housing block to go on lockdown and 39 staff to be stood down.
As of Monday morning, 46 prisoners have returned a positive rapid antigen test at the Serco-run Kohuora Auckland South Corrections Facility.
These prisoners are awaiting PCR test results to confirm just how widespread the virus is within the facility. At least five staff members have also now returned positive rapid antigen tests, according to the Corrections Association of NZ industrial officer Alan Whitley.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, the prison system has looked after just fewer than 100 prisoners with Covid-19, so it is clear Omicron has the Department of Corrections and Serco treading unexplored ground.
It was a tragic inevitability, said Mike Williams, the CEO of prison reform group New Zealand Howard League.
“If the objective so far was keeping Covid out of jails, they deserve a pat on the back,” he said. “But we believe it was almost inevitable.”
But according to Department of Corrections Northern regional commissioner Lynette Cave, the department has been actively planning for this situation since the beginning of the pandemic.
“As we have seen overseas, the impacts of Covid-19 in a prison environment can be devastating,” she said. “Therefore, we have been learning from overseas jurisdictions about the best ways to manage Covid-19 in prisons.”
Overseas, prisons have sat like so many dry tinderboxes waiting for the hungry flames of Covid.
And as in many aspects of the pandemic, it seems that New Zealand’s privileged opportunity to sit on the sidelines and watch the game for a while before playing has given groups like Corrections the chance to prepare for the day when outer defences fail.
The UN estimates there are more than 527,000 prisoners who have become infected with the virus in 122 countries, with more than 3800 fatalities in 47 countries. It’s a number that may actually be higher due to quickly changing circumstances and limited testing capacity in many parts of the world.
Here, the Government has 7927 prisoners in its custody – people who can do little on their own behest to avoid the virus. Measures taken on their behalf to keep them safe have included quarantine units at each facility, routine testing for all new arrivals, and extensive use of PPE by staff and guests.
But part of this response has been limiting the amount of guests from the outside - either by vaccination status under the green light, or now with a total ban on face-to-face meetings.
This is the tragedy of prison life in a pandemic, says Williams.
“One of the most serious effects of the pandemic is the lack of visitors,” he said. “The reason why New Zealand has a high prison population is the astronomical rate of reoffending. One of the things that stops reoffending is connection to family or whānau.”
Volunteers from the Howard League have also been massively curtailed, hampering the organisation’s usual provision of literacy education and driving lessons.
Williams supports the approach, even if it has made life harder for prisoners already doing hard time.
“If they didn’t do this, it would spread like wildfire through the prisons,” he said.
Dr Jarrod Gilbert, Director of Criminal Justice at the University of Canterbury, agreed with this. “It’s real between a rock and a hard place stuff,” he said.
Part of the worry is that the prison population has its own particular vulnerability to the virus, due to the demographic makeup of prisoners and the layouts of the facilities themselves.
“Prisoners have high morbidity issues and live in incredibly close proximities where the virus can be easily transmitted,” Gilbert said.
A life sharing a small cell with another person with limited ventilation makes it difficult to be particularly infection-wary - although it should be noted that each of the infected prisoners in the South Auckland facility are housed in their own individual cell.
Normal prison life will be put on pause either way - whether it's due to the disease rampaging inside of prison walls, or lockdown measures put in place to prevent that from happening.
Gilbert says it's tough, but unavoidable.
“When programs can't be run, it will have an effect on the lives of prisoners,” Gilbert said. “It makes everything tougher. A restricted life further restricted is a tough old time.”
He compared it to the same trade-off which has become a divisive talking point when it comes to the New Zealand Government’s response to the pandemic - shutting down businesses to save lives, or opening up to save the economy?
Prisons are intensified environments, and this dilemma is magnified further. An environment so rife for the spread of the virus, with people who have restricted access to the world outside at the best of times, puts greater weight on either side of the debate.
One protective shield already in place for the prison population is vaccination.
Kohuora Auckland South Corrections Facility’s population of 771 is 80 percent vaccinated. For comparison, the population of Japan just hit a similar milestone, while the US is still lagging behind at just under 65 percent.
The total prison population has just over 70 percent double-dosed.
So why has Kohuora, with its high levels of vaccine uptake, potentially hosted the first significant prison outbreak?
According to Mike Williams, it could be as simple as location.
“South Auckland has more or less been the epicentre of Covid,” he said.
And with staff in and out each day from their lives in the community, there isn’t much more that can be done to stop the potential for spread than PPE and regular testing.
It remains a mystery how the virus got into the facility.
