Amid pandemic, U.S. must reduce incarceration to protect public safety, report finds
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| Photo by Spencer Weiner/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images |
To stem the tide of COVID-19 infections both within correctional institutions and in surrounding communities, jurisdictions around the U.S. should act immediately to reduce the number of people housed behind bars.
That’s the recommendation of a panel of criminal justice and public health experts assembled by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.
The panel detailed its
guidance in “Decarcerating
Correctional Facilities During COVID-19: Advancing Health, Equity and Safety,”
a report released on Oct. 19.
Jails and prisons in the U.S. are
often overcrowded, dense, poorly ventilated and disconnected from public health
systems, making COVID-19 prevention among incarcerated people and staff
exceedingly difficult, the panel reported. As of August 2020, COVID-19 case
rates among incarcerated people were nearly five times higher than in the
general population, and three times higher among correctional staff.
Decarceration — reducing prison
populations by releasing individuals and diverting others away from incarceration
before they enter the criminal justice system — can lower the risk of infection
for older and other high-risk incarcerated persons, the report said, and allow
correctional facilities to more easily implement other COVID-19 prevention
strategies such as physical distancing.
“For the past 40 years, our criminal justice policies purportedly in pursuit of public safety have resulted in unprecedented mass incarceration that is strikingly and disproportionately impacting the impoverished and people of color,” said Dr. Josiah “Jody” Rich, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at Brown University and a member of the panel. “The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us that mass incarceration has itself become a major threat to public safety. Addressing the issue is long overdue for many reasons, including this pandemic and the next.”
The report said that while some
jurisdictions have taken steps to decarcerate since the onset of the pandemic,
these efforts have so far been insufficient to reduce the risk of COVID-19 in jails
and prisons.
The panel recommends that correctional officials identify candidates for release in a fair and equitable manner. Individuals who are medically vulnerable, nearing the end of their sentence, or who present a low risk of committing serious crime will likely be suitable candidates.
Research on recidivism suggests that decarceration can be
done with minimal risk to public safety — the report points to data from New
York and California that show large reductions in prison populations were followed
by crime rates that either fell or remained low.
To safely decarcerate, public
officials should implement COVID-19 testing prior to release and facilitate
quarantining as necessary, the report said. Officials should take steps to
provide newly released individuals with a safe place in the community to
quarantine for 14 days when needed, prior to returning to their families.
Other strategies outlined in report
for reducing incarceration include:
- directing law enforcement to issue citations in lieu of making arrests;
- releasing defendants on their own recognizance as a default option, rather than implementing pretrial detention, unless strong evidence shows it would be at odds with public safety;
- eliminating incarceration for a failure to pay fines and fees;
- addressing misdemeanors, probation and parole violations, and other less serious with penalties that do not include incarceration;
- eliminating or reducing bail;
- revising compassionate release policies to account for consideration of an incarcerated person’s medical condition, age, impairment or family circumstances;
- and examining parole and probation policies and procedures to limit or eliminate returning to correctional facilities for technical violations.
The committee was co-chaired by
Emily Wang, associate professor and director of the SEICHE Center for Health
and Justice in the Yale School of Medicine, and Bruce Western, a professor of
sociology and social justice and co-director of the Justice Lab at Columbia
University.