Analyzing the Role of Hyper Partisanship and Its Emphasis on Personal Responsibility in Prisons During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The research project analyzes how hyper partisanship influences politicians' views on prisons and whether their views contribute to the worsened conditions of prisons throughout the pandemic. I argue that in red states with a Republican majority, inmates experienced worsened conditions due to hyper partisanship emphasizing personal responsibility; personal responsibility led to politicians downplaying the role of the government in controlling the pandemic and emphasizing the role of personal responsibility in people taking care of themselves.The paper encompasses a mixed methods approach that first utilizes a quantitative approach to understand how the COVID-19 virus is transmitted among prisons in Texas and California. A qualitative approach is utilized to understand the experiences that inmates and staff members experienced in a hyper partisan environment. In addition, the qualitative approach unveils the expectations inmates and staff members had regarding how the COVID-19 pandemic should have been managed and how prisons should operate and treat inmates.Ultimately, states could have taken greater initiative to ensure that inmates were afforded the same protections from COVID-19 that much of society had access to.