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Abstract ObjectiveWe use the case of housing insecurity to examine how romantic partner incarceration results in increased and prolonged surveillance of women at home. BackgroundRomantic partner incarceration prompts surveillance from the criminal legal system while simultaneously eroding women's finances, health, and family relationships. Less is known about how these symbiotic harms of romantic partner incarceration enable surveillance beyond the criminal legal system. MethodWe use longitudinal interviews with 35 (previously coresident) romantic partners of incarcerated men, showing how incarceration prompts unwanted moves for partners, how women manage housing insecurity following partner incarceration, and how they become embedded into living arrangements where they are monitored, evaluated, and controlled. ResultsWe identify three primary findings. First, women experiencing housing insecurity after romantic partner incarceration relied heavily on their social ties (and, to a lesser extent, institutional housing providers) while enduring stressful and prolonged housing searches. Second, the homes that women move into expose them to increased surveillance. Women encounter domestic, caregiving, romantic, and financial surveillance. Romantic partner incarceration prompts large changes in surveillance among women who left independent homes, moderate changes in surveillance among women who left comparatively desirable doubled‐up homes, and prolonged surveillance among nonmovers. Finally, women respond to surveillance by monitoring burdens on hosts and reframing stays in shared homes as temporary. ConclusionTaken together, these findings extend prior research on the symbiotic harms of romantic partner incarceration, how women attached to incarcerated men experience surveillance, and how doubled‐up families sustain shared homes. 

U.S. prisons were especially susceptible to COVID-19 infection and death; however, data limitations have precluded a national accounting of prison mortality (including but not limited to COVID-19 mortality) during the pandemic. Our analysis of mortality data collected from public records requests (supplemented with publicly available data) from 48 Departments of Corrections provides the most comprehensive understanding to date of in-custody mortality during 2020. We find that total mortality increased by 77% in 2020 relative to 2019, corresponding to 3.4 times the mortality increase in the general population, and that mortality in prisons increased across all age groups (49 and under, 50 to 64, and 65 and older). COVID-19 was the primary driver for increases in mortality due to natural causes; some states also experienced substantial increases due to unnatural causes. These findings provide critical information about the pandemic’s toll on some of the country’s most vulnerable individuals while underscoring the need for data transparency and standardized reporting in carceral settings.