Cook County Jail releases could be spreading COVID-19 in community, study suggests

Thousands of people who are arrested, then processed at Cook County Jail and released could be putting the public at risk of being infected with COVID-19, according to research published Thursday.

The peer-reviewed analysis, published online by the journal Health Affairs, shows that COVID-19 case rates were significantly higher in zip codes with higher rates of arrest and released jail inmates.

Eric Reinhart, a University of Chicago medical student and who is also pursuing a doctorate at Harvard, analyzed records for more than 2,000 inmates released in March that he obtained through an open-records request. He then linked that information with COVID-19 data by ZIP code from the Illinois Department of Public Health. Reinhart concluded for each person arrested, there’s a risk of infecting at least two people in the community with COVID-19, a multiplier effect estimate he called conservative.

“For every person you put in jail, you’re going to infect more people in the community,” Reinhart said in an interview.

In his analysis, the researcher said his findings may help explain “the striking racial disparities” prevalent in COVID cases.

“Although we cannot infer causality, it is possible that, as arrested individuals are exposed to high-risk spaces for infection in jails and the later released to their communities, the criminal justice system is turning them into potential disease vectors for their families, neighbors and, ultimately, the general public,” the study said.

But Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart’s office strongly disputed the study’s findings and said officials have taken extraordinary measures to prevent the spread of the virus since early outbreaks at the jail.

“This study is a fantasy filled with assumptions bordering on lies,” sheriff’s office spokesman Matthew Walberg said. “The focus is on outdated information and completely ignores the fact that as a result of our interventions, cases at the jail have dropped precipitously over the past month.”

At the end of April, state health officials reported high numbers of African-American and Latino residents tested positive for COVID-19, showing a disproportionate number of cases. While African-Americans make up 14% of the state’s population, they represented 29% of coronavirus cases.

Cases at the jail peaked at more than 300 cases around that time.

“It shows that this infection within the jail cannot be contained within the jail’s walls,” Alexa Van Brunt, an attorney with the MacArthur Justice Center who is representing detainees in a class-action lawsuit against Dart, said of the study. “The jail is part of the community and the failure of the jail to protect detainees puts the community in danger.”

A federal judge in April denied the lawsuit’s request for a court order to release or transfer elderly and medically compromised detainees during the outbreak, but approved a series of measures to reduce the spread of the virus, including directing the jail to house most detainees in single-cells and conduct widespread coronavirus testing — steps the sheriff’s office says it was already taking.

Last month, Dart warned those measures might not be enough if the jail saw its usual influx of inmates during the summer months. Van Brunt said the study showed that if the sheriff cannot socially distance detainees, more should be released. “What is clear is that this emergency is not over … and we’re likely to see another outbreak,” Van Brunt said.

Sharlyn Grace, executive director of the Chicago Community Bond Fund, a nonprofit that posts bond for people who cannot afford it, called the study a “wake-up call for elected officials” of the public health risks caused by policing and incarnation and said it showed the need to keep the jail’s population reduced into summer.

Reinhart said his findings were “especially relevant” given recent mass arrests across the country. In Chicago and cities across the U.S., thousands of people went to jail over the past week related to protests.

Sheriff’s office records show bookings at the jail jumped after days of citywide unrest from an average of about 100 per day to 170 on Monday to 215 on Tuesday. Slightly less than half of people brought to the jail were released the same day. If a person is not released the same day they are booked, they are tested for the coronavirus that day and again 14 days later. If a detainee tests positive during that window, they are held in isolation, the sheriff’s office said.

“As of [Wednesday], there were 36 detainees positive for COVID-19 at the jail, and 42 jail staff members currently positive,” Walberg said. “More important, virtually all of the new cases in recent weeks have come from newly arrested individuals who tested positive at intake, not from those who were already in custody.”

Reinhart added that he focused his research on Cook County Jail, the largest in the country, because of its high number of coronavirus cases. He said the Chicago jail could be indicative of a larger trend.

“What’s happening here, I have no doubt is happening across the country,” Reinhart said.