Covid-19 Salgınının Cezaevleri Ve Hükümlüler Üzerindeki Etkisi: İçerik Analizi

In late December 2019, a novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, was identified as the pathogen that caused an outbreak of coronavirus infection (COVID-19) in Wuhan, Hubei, China. On March 11, 2020, COVID-19 outbreak was declared as a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO). Today, the number of deaths from COVID-19 worldwide has surpassed three million, and the total number of cases recorded has exceeded 140 million. It is now a known fact that the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic accelerates, especially in indoor and crowded environments. Places with high socialization and interaction such as universities, schools, factories, hospitals, shopping centers, places of worship, entertainment venues have become places that pose a risk for the COVID-19 outbreak. Prisons are risky environments in terms of communicable diseases, specificallyCOVID-19 infection and the increase in the number of infected patients. Prisons are overcrowded, poorly ventilated, physical conditions are mostly poor and close contact is common and access to health services is often inadequate. Due to these conditions, prisons have become an integral part of the public health struggle all over the world. When the prison population is considered together with the course of the pandemic all over the world and the health infrastructure and hazardous physical conditions of prisons, especially in underdeveloped and developing countries, it is understood that a prisoner or the prison population is at serious risk in terms of both public health and prison health. Although many countries declare that they are implementing similar protective and preventive practices, very few countries share information on incidents and death rates in prisons with the public. Research studies are needed in the field in order to reach more comprehensive data in the most accurate and transparent way. However, since the first day of the COVID-19 outbreak, it has been observed that there have been a limited number of studies in this area. In this present study, we aim to examine how the prison population, who are living in poor physical conditions along with intense circulation of people, were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, and what measures were taken by policy administrators by analyzing relevant peer-reviewed research studies published worldwide. This research also offers an inclusive idea for the existing and potential prison problems in Turkey and to determine the solutions to be applied to these problems. The research is designed to access data through document analysis and to examine the obtained raw data through content analysis. In this context, research data was collected by accessing scientific indexes of Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-E), and Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) through the Web of Science Core Collection database, which provides comprehensive citation data for a wide range of academic disciplines and provides paid access to multiple databases. Following the data collection, works that were repetitive or deemed unsuitable for the objective of the present research were removed, and in the final analysis, 110 articles were included in the study. The data obtained were thematically classified and subjected to content analysis. In the first stage, the works were presented to the journals published, and in the second stage the data were presented thematically according to the fields of publication. Much of the research studies focuses on prisons and the criminal justice and penal systems. For researchers, studies at institutional level can be seen more accessible and functional than possible studies with the prison populations. When the distribution of research studies according to the journals was examined, Victims & Offenders journal constituted 28% of all publications. When the obtained data (n=110) were classified, it was found that the studies were produced over three different research themes. The first of these was how prisons were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and how prison authorities and penal systems responded to this process, and what kind of interventions and models they developed (n=66). The second was the studies that The second was the studies that addressed the changes and effects of prisons in the penal systems in order to be least affected by the pandemic (n=19). The third was the research on the extent to which experiences in prisons affect public health, substance use disorders and other psychosocial problems and treatments, and access to the right to health care (n=25). However, it was found that a significant part of the research studies conducted were descriptive studies, primarily focusing on determining the nature of the situation. However, the results of the studies were generally interpreted in two different ways. One of them was that the massive human and economic losses created by the COVID-19 pandemic revealed profound social injustice and inequalities. In particular, the situation in prisons, which continued to be one of the most debated institutions in the penal system, was interpreted as a human rights violation and a public health crisis. Another approach was that the global impact of COVID-19 was seen as an opportunity for prison reform and healthcare reform that would go beyond borders. It created an expectation that problems such as denial of access to the medical treatment, inadequacy of physical conditions, poverty, maltreatment, which were already present in prisons, became more visible with the COVID-19 pandemic, and this situation would make institutional revisions necessary. The current inadequacy of limited and specific research is thought to be closely related to the ongoing process of combating the COVID -19 outbreak. It should not be forgotten that the time factor is one of the most important variables in order to reveal the effects and changes of the COVID-19 pandemic on the criminal justice system, especially on prisons and prison inmates.