JAY-Z and Meek Mill's REFORM Alliance Sends Nearly 100,000 Surgical Masks to Jails and Prisons

The REFORM alliance, the criminal justice reform organization led by JAY-Z and Meek Mill, is sending nearly 100,000 surgical masks to correctional facilities across the United States. Those included are the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman, a facility that is apart of the lawsuit from Hov, Yo Gotti and Team Roc against the Mississippi Department of Corrections.

Additional facilities to receive masks will be the Rikers Island complex in New York City and more in effort to assist correctional officers, health care workers and inmates as COVID-19 continues to spread.

In the announcement, 40,000 masks will be sent to the Tennessee Department of Corrections, 5,000 masks to Parchman and 50,000 to Rikers, and another 2,500 to a Rikers medical facility.

“It’s a very vulnerable population,” Jessica Jackson, the chief advocacy officer at REFORM said CBS News. “We’re really worried about the number of people coming in and out of the facility, and the fact that the people living there might be sitting ducks during this pandemic.”

The masks are apart of the SAFER Plan of the REFORM Alliance, which will provide policy recommendations to assist prisons and jails in response to outbreaks.