Containing the virus
ike cruise ship passengers and nursing home residents, inmates in jails and prisons are at heightened risk of contracting and rapidly transmitting the coronavirus—with the added peril of violent combustion that is ever present in an incarcerated population. It is critical that U.S. officials focus right now on how to limit the pandemic’s effects in federal and state facilities.
There are no known major outbreaks yet in prisons and jails, though that may reflect the absence of testing in the facilities. Many of them are perfect incubators for the disease, housing packed-in populations more likely than other Americans to have a chronic condition or infectious disease. Social distancing, the most effective means of impeding the spread of the virus, is all but impossible at most prisons and jails.
Some 2.2 million prisoners are in U.S. prisons and jails. They are in danger; so are hundreds of thousands of corrections officers and others who work in such institutions and then circulate in their communities. All of them need timely and complete information on protocols and best practices for contending with the virus.
Even with full notice, however, intensive mitigation will be required, including shifts in policy designed to thin the ranks of prisoners, especially those most at risk. Prisoner advocate organizations have offered suggestions worth considering. Those include supervised release for nonviolent inmates, especially those who suffer from chronic diseases, and, for some elderly prisoners, expedited parole hearings.
Many state and local institutions that house prisoners are already limiting visits by outsiders, including relatives and lawyers. They would be well advised to compensate by expanding inmates’ telephone privileges to the extent practicable, and supplementing them with video links.
In California, the state corrections department announced that it has begun conducting parole hearings for convicts behind closed doors, barring observers and requiring that any input from prosecutors and victims take place by telephone or video hookup. It’s the responsible thing to do, and other states are following suit.
The real danger is in doing nothing, on the belief that what takes place in penal institutions is less critical or somehow separate from society, or that the lives of convicts are worth less than those of free men and women. In fact, prisons and jails are porous places; their walls do nothing to impede the spread of disease. The failure to contain the virus on the inside, for whatever reason, will inevitably accelerate its proliferation on the outside.