Black inmates in Kansas prisons suffer disproportionately from COVID-19, data shows
Black people in Kansas prisons have contracted the new coronavirus at a higher rate compared to other groups during the pandemic this year, according to data from the Kansas Department of Corrections.
While about 28% of the prison population is Black, those prisoners accounted for 37% of the COVID-19 cases, according to statistics from the corrections department.
They also made up all four of the deaths.
Black people in general have suffered disproportionately from the virus, both in the Kansas City region and across the U.S., as the pandemic has exacerbated existing social inequalities, according to public health experts.
Through a public records request, The Star obtained data from the Kansas prison system showing demographic information related to the virus.
Kansas Department of Corrections spokeswoman Rebecca Witte said the agency did not collect data on race at the beginning of the pandemic, so the data was incomplete.
A total of 901 inmates from three facilities have tested positive. More than 90% of those cases were found at Lansing Correctional Facility.
Experts said discriminatory practices have led to mass incarceration and continue to drive disparities within prisons. The disproportionate rates of COVID-19 may be a result of disparities in access to health care, the existence of underlying health conditions and how patients are treated.
“We see some patterns in policing, what is responded to, how that response is handled, etc. So that’s going to be driving the proportions of black folks who are driven into prisons, that’s our underlying baseline,” said Zinzi Bailey, a social epidemiologist at the University of Miami. “Within a correctional facility, racism doesn’t disappear.
“Often times, individuals’ reports of symptoms or feeling pain or feeling some kind of complaint, is perceived differently depending on who they are,” Bailey said.
Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein, who started the COVID Prison Project, housed at the University of North Carolina, said there are similarities between what is happening in prisons and in communities.
“We’ve seen in the community too that people of color are disproportionately being affected by COVID,” she said.
Black people make up about 6% of Kansas’s population, but account for 12% of the state’s coronavirus cases.
That disparity is even starker when it comes to deaths: 23% of the state’s deaths have been Black men and women.
