Crisis Management of the Covid 19 Epidemic in coercive contexts

The period from the outbreak of the first Covid19 diseases in China to the epidemic in Italy and currently also the drastically increasing number of reports of infected people in Switzerland lasted only 8 weeks. As a consequence, public life was drastically reduced, schools were closed and employees were recommended or ordered to work in their home office. One basis for these preventive measures was a high degree of flexibility of each individual and alternative forms of work and also alternate forms of care in society. Nevertheless, there are institutions that are reaching their limits and are neither able to maintain physical distance nor couldn't work without their employees. These are institutions with a governmental mandate, whose clients are in a total system, the coercive context in mandated settings. In particular, these are institutions of the prison system, therapy facilities, as well as care facilities for children and young people. Here, on the one hand, the possibilities of living in a distance are drastically restricted, the employees must already be on site due to the security aspect, and the possibilities for information and communication are also classically handled restrictively. In addition, these are per se vulnerable groups because of infectious diseases such as hepatitis and HIV occur 9 times more frequently than in the overall population. Nevertheless, the institutions of the justice system and of care in the area of children and young people have a duty of care and the statutory mandate to adapt life in a coercive context to the conditions in freedom, including the health care. (StGB Art. 75). The question that arises is:•How can prevention measures be implemented in closed coercive contexts?In order to answer these question, several institutions of mandatory context, will be examined in more detail by means of qualitative interviews with employees from: prisons, youth housing and therapy facilities as well as residential and work externalities. The aim of the study is to find out which strategies and measures have proven to be helpful in dealing with pandemics and crisis situations, so they can be managed better in the future.