Prison populations in the US have faced outbreaks of coronavirus.
Jay-Z and Meek Mill’s Reform Alliance organisation is donating 100,000 face masks to prisons across the United States to help stop the spread of coronavirus between inmates.
Prisoners are particularly vulnerable to catching the virus as conditions inmates are kept in make it difficult or impossible follow social distancing guidelines. “It’s a very vulnerable population,” Reform Alliance chief advocacy officer Jessica Jackson told CBS News. We’re really worried about the number of people coming in and out of the facility, and the fact that the people living there might be sitting ducks during this pandemic.”
The Reform Alliance is an organisation founded in 2019 by a consortium of high profiles public figures and financiers including Jay-Z and Meek Mill to “dramatically reduce the number of people who are unjustly under the control of the criminal justice system.” The Alliance has donated 5,000 masks to Mississippi State Penitentiary, 40,000 to Tennessee and 50,000 to Rikers Island in New York.
