Coronavirus in rural America (Part XXVII): prisons as a rural hotspot

I've been trying to keep up with coronavirus data out of Arkansas, my home state, and today I even watched Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson's daily press conference for the first time.  Among other phenomena in what we used to call "The Land of Opportunity," now "The Natural State," I'm paying attention to the outbreak at "Cummins Unit," as it is often called, the state's prison farm, in southeast Arkansas, in the Delta.  Here's the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette's coverage that was making headlines a few days ago, and here is an excerpt from today's story, which explains that the ACLU and NAACP are suing for inmates release.  

Inmates at three state prisons filed a federal class-action lawsuit Tuesday over the spread of coronavirus within the system, seeking to force the release of elderly and medically frail inmates from crowded prisons, and better access to disinfectants and hygiene products. 

The lawsuit comes as infections at the state's largest prison, the Cummins Unit, flared to more than 600 cases, making it one of the densest coronavirus hot spots in the country.

The suit alleges that prison officials violated inmates' rights by forcing them to live together -- less than 6 feet apart -- in crowded barracks, without supplies of soap, hand sanitizer or other disinfectants to fight the virus. 

One plaintiff, a man in his 20s identified in the complaint as "John Doe," is claimed by his attorneys to be among the inmates at the Cummins Unit who tested positive for the virus and was quarantined.

Cummins is located in Lincoln County, population 14, 034, which is obviously now reporting a very high incidence of infection.

Lincoln County loomed large in this study I did about five years ago of the state's rural lawyer shortage.  Lincoln County has one of the most acute lawyer shortages in the state or, for that matter, the nation. 

Here's coverage of what is happening in Cummins from KATV out of Little Rock. 

We have also seen very high concentrations of coronavirus in jails, most notably in Chicago and New York, which media have paid quite a bit of attention to.  But it seems inevitable that some of the highest concentrations at the county level would be in rural places, where populations are low but incarcerated persons constitute significant proportions of populations as tracked by the U.S. Census.

This April 29, 2020 postscript, from the mayor of Pine Bluff, published in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, makes the point I made above.