Management of COVID-19 for Persons with Mental Illness in Secure Units: A Rapid International Review to Inform Practice in Québec

COVID, Crime & Criminal Justice: Affirming the Call for System Reform Research

“…Institutions employed a variety of mitigation strategies to limit spread, such as the creation of quarantine quarters and suspending offender programming. The spread of the virus especially emphasized the importance of a detox area and mandatory quarantine regulations in a logic of "patient cohorting" (Lemieux et al, 2020;Marcum, 2020). Among jails in particular, sentences are short and a large portion of individuals are being held pretrial meaning there is a greater level of offender movement within facilities.…”

“…Among jails in particular, sentences are short and a large portion of individuals are being held pretrial meaning there is a greater level of offender movement within facilities. Toward this end, facilities created spaces for those found to test positive for COVID (hot zones), those awaiting the results of a test (warm zones), and those who do not have the virus (cold zones) (Lemieux et al, 2020). Patient cohorting may be useful to control other communicable diseases often found within correctional institutions, such as tuberculosis, hepatitis, and sexually transmitted diseases.…”

“…Patient cohorting may be useful to control other communicable diseases often found within correctional institutions, such as tuberculosis, hepatitis, and sexually transmitted diseases. With increased isolation periods among inmates and risks surrounding non-essential employees entering facilities, most programming (e.g., education, substance abuse, mental health, employment) in the U.S. faced cancellation (Byrne et al, 2020;Lemieux et al, 2020;Pyrooz et al, 2020). Among facilities that did not cancel programming, the use of technology became integral to maintaining the programs (Collica-Cox & Molina, 2020).…”

“…A New York jail advocated for increased sanitation within the facility by adding hand sanitizing stations (Collica-Cox & Molina, 2020). There have been calls for correctional institutions to increase the accessibility of hand sanitizers and disinfect high-touch surfaces (e.g., doors, dining hall, shared surfaces) in betterment of public health and criminal justice system operations (Lemieux et al, 2020;Novisky et al, 2020).…”