Italy’s prisons suffering from overcrowding, with over 61,000 inmates locked up in spaces designed to hold just 51,000. As well as halting visits and limiting day releases, all prison staff are supposed to have their temperatures checked on arrival each day. Medical checks for incoming inmates have also been ramped up. — AFP
In Italy, six inmates have died as riots broke out after they were not allowed to have visitors. Elsewhere, there have been containment efforts to stop the spread of the virus.

Iran has reported 595 new infections and 43 new deaths within the past 24 hours. This takes total cases of coronavirus to 7,161, with 237 deaths, the health ministry spokesman said.

Raisi said the release of prisoners would continue “to the point where it doesn’t create insecurity in society”,...

He did not give further details or specify when those released would have to return to jail.

“Recent reports indicate that the COVID-19 virus has spread inside Iranian prisons,” Javaid Rehman, the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Iran, said in Geneva on Monday.

The nation’s jails and prisons are on high alert, stepping up inmate screenings, sanitizing jail cells and urging lawyers to scale back in-person visits to prevent the new coronavirus from spreading through their vast inmate populations.

There have been no reports of COVID-19 inside U.S. jails or prisons. But more people are incarcerated per capita here than in any other country in the world and prisons have become hot spots in other nations touched by the outbreak.

A sick inmate has triggered a lockdown at Melbourne prison unit, amid fears a coronavirus outbreak in the state’s prisons could wreak havoc on the legal system.