Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Jabs for jailbirds: why prisoners should skip the vaccine queue

(Getty images)

Labour MP Zarah Sultana has caused a bit of a stir by proposing that prisoners be allowed to skip the queue for the Covid-19 vaccine. She’s even been Steerpiked, a rite of passage for any aspiring ‘Loony Left’ Labour MP. If anything, her compassion for lags marks a welcome development in someone who six years ago was pledging to celebrate the deaths of Tony Blair and Benjamin Netanyahu. 

Sultana asked vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi at the science and technology select committee yesterday whether the government had considered ‘prioritising vaccinating detainees as well as those who work in prisons’. 

Despite the backlash to Sultana’s suggestion, the problem is that there’s evidence to back up her argument.

Some things are right even if Zarah Sultana says so

Zahawi said those within the prison estate ‘who fall into the most vulnerable categories’ would be prioritised, but the prison estate itself is a vulnerable category. A 2018 report by the Commons health and social care committee concluded:

‘Too many prisoners remain in unsafe, unsanitary and outdated establishments. Violence and self-harm are at record highs. Most prisons exceed their certified normal accommodation level and a quarter of prisoners over the last two years have lived in overcrowded cells. Staffing shortages have forced overstretched prisons to run restricted regimes, severely limiting not only opportunities for prisoners to engage in purposeful activity, but access to health and care services both in and outside prisons.’

Prisoners are twice as likely as the general population to suffer from respiratory conditions, five times as likely to be infected with tuberculosis and, at 80 per cent, are five times as likely to smoke. The mortality rate for inmates in England is 50 per cent higher than the population as a whole. 

Despite their heightened health vulnerabilities, prisoners have a quarter fewer hospital appointments and twice as many missed appointments while one-in-five pregnant prisoners miss midwife appointments and almost one-third do not attend obstetrician appointments.

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