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Moving People-and Coronavirus- From Prison to Prison

Westside Gazette - 12/29/2020

As COVID-19 infections soar, prisoners and corrections officers worry that transferring people between facilities is causing outbreaks.

Coverage of The Covid-19 Pandemic, Criminal Justice and Immigration,

DETROIT - Families of men incarcerated at Michigan'sKinross Correctional Facility believed its remote location would spare it from a deadly COVID-19 outbreak. For a while, they seemed to be right.

Kinross, built on the grounds of a former Air Force base in the Upper Peninsula, is closer to Canada than it is to Detroit. Unlike most prisons in Michigan, Kinross had remained almost unscathed by the coronavirus with only one case between March and October.

This article was published in partnership with The Associated Press.

But on Oct. 28, corrections officials transferred nine prisoners to Kinross from Marquette Branch Prison, several hours west, where COVID-19 was running rampant. There were 837 confirmed cases by late October, 350 of which were active when the men were transferred.

Roughly three weeks later, Kinross had its first major outbreak, corrections department data showed. Though agency officials say it is not because of the transfers, more than 1,100 prisoners have now been infected, at least seven have died and more than 100 guards have fallen ill. The prisoners who came to Kinross had been transferred twice, sent first to Marquette after a riot where they were held, and then tested positive for COVID-19 there before leaving for Kinross, officials said.

In prisons around the country, COVID-19 outbreaks have followed transfers of prisoners or prison workers. Nearly all the 25 state prison systems and the federal Bureau of Prisons that responded to a survey conducted by The Marshall Project and The Associated Press said they had reduced or limited the number of prisoners they moved due to the pandemic. Eight states

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