News Beat

The warnings were clear: COVID-19 would spread like wildfire in jails and prisons. It has. The top COVID-19 clusters across America are overwhelmingly jails and prisons, and efforts to reduce jail populations have stalled amid a surge in infections. Among the hardest-hit is San Quentin State Prison in California, which is responsible for about a quarter of the state prison system’s COVID-19 infections and almost half its deaths. Guests: Danielle Harris, managing attorney for the San Francisco Public Defender's Integrity Unit. Emily Widra, research analyst at the Massachusetts-based Prison Policy Initiative. Sharon Dolovich, professor of law at UCLA School of Law, and director of the UCLA Prison Law & Policy Program. She also serves as director of the UCLA Law COVID-19 Behind Bars Data Project. News Beat is an award-winning Morey Creative Studios podcast. Producer: Michael "Manny Faces" Conforti Editor-In-Chief: Chris Twarowski Managing Editor: Rashed Mian Episode Art: Jeff Main Executive Producer: Jed More