Decarceration a short-sighted plan to curb COVID-19

Lawmakers and advocates looking to ease the spread of coronavirus in prisons through decarceration are playing a short-sighted, potentially dangerous game while doing little to address real safety in this pandemic and future outbreaks.

Yesterday, a coalition of legal aid and community groups urged Gov. Charlie Baker’s administration to reduce incarceration levels and limit the risk of COVID19 transmission among inmates and correctional officers. The speakers at Tuesday’s press conference said social-distancing practices and other public health protocols cannot be properly implemented in prisons and jails because of crowded conditions.

“The need for decarceration, the release of prisoners is the only way to stem the public health emergency that’s facing our prisoners, those that are incarcerated,” said Rev. David Lewis, a board member of the Pioneer Valley Project. “Social distancing is impossible to do in prisons, and infections are spreading dangerously fast.”

Why, instead of working to improve health protocols, is Plan A letting people out of jail and into communities that are also subject to rising infection rates?

If the MBTA can sanitize trains, buses and trolleys daily, and disinfect high-contact surfaces in its stations every four hours, why can’t a similar cleansing regime be implemented at lockup facilities across the state? The T also has hand sanitizer dispensers in stations — disbursement of these as well as washable masks are measures deserving of advocacy.

Formidable tasks, certainly. But the state managed to set up field hospitals with the help of the National Guard as local hospitals dealt with coronavirus patient overcrowding. Strategic implementation of protocols designed to ease spread of the virus makes more sense than opening the doors for designated inmates, for a number of reasons.

First, there is the issue of who would be released.

.A bill proposed by Democratic state Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa of Northampton, and co-signed by 28 other state representatives, calls for release of those who pose “no immediate physical threat to the community, including all individuals incarcerated for the simple possession of controlled substances.”

That last bit has been on the progressive agenda for decarceration for some time.

Additional releases shall include: all individuals who are over 50 years of age; all individuals who are included in the populations that the CDC has classified as vulnerable (such as those who are immunocompromised or immunosuppressed and those with asthma, cancer, heart disease, lung disease, immunodeficiency and diabetes); and pregnant people.

The first prisoner infected with coronavirus in the state was reported at the Massachusetts Treatment Center in Bridgewater on March 21. The MTC is a medium-security facility housing sex offenders. One assumes this population would not be left out of the great exodus.

These proposals for prisoner release appear to come from a place of compassion, but by concentrating on springing inmates instead of overhauling sanitation and disinfection protocols, all they do is kick the can down the road until the next health emergency hits.

Even when a coronavirus vaccine is here, that will not stop other strains of influenza from working through the population, and some could be brutal. Introduce norovirus to even one prison, and it’s a recipe for disaster. Best to focus on giving lockups the ability to keep the inmates in a sanitary environment, for this pandemic and whatever could be on the horizon.