Data on the race/ethnicity of inmates within individual California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation facilities is unavailable to the public: instead, semi-annual statewide reports on the race/ethnicity of inmates are published by the Department (Harris et al 2020). Because of this troubling data opacity, it is impossible to accurately quantify the racially unequal impact of the virus on Californians. As a thought exercise, we collected data on the percentages of different racial/ethnic groups in California, Marin County, and CDCR inmates as a proxy for San Quentin Prison inmates.
A quick glance at the data comparison above demonstrates the stark disproportionality of Black and Hispanic Californians incarcerated–and thus likely infected in prisons–compared to their white counterparts. More troublingly, these inmates of color are counted as residents of the county where they are incarcerated, instead of their home counties. This process is referred to as prison gerrymandering, and it simultaneously disenfranchises the incarcerated, decreases political representation of their home communities, and increases political representation of areas where prisons are located. In California, these areas are overwhelmingly rural and white (Harris et al 2020; Sacramento Bee and ProPublica 2019). Prisons have long been a site of racial injustice in California, the United States, and the world, and this reality has only been further exposed and exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. (Sacramento Bee and ProPublica 2019)
