Advocates want inmates granted parole freed
One month ago, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles approved Juan Escobedo's parole request. But before the state will release the 41-year-old inmate, who is serving a sentence for a third drunken driving offense, he must complete a 6-month substance-abuse recovery program.
Escobedo is still waiting to begin the program. Meanwhile, his wife said, he is watching with fear as coronavirus spreads like wildfire in prisons across Texas and the country, wondering every day if his punishment will become a death sentence.
Emily Escobedo called the situation “nightmarish.”
“We're just like, `Come on and send him home before it gets there,'” she said. “Why are we waiting?”
Across the nation, thousands of inmates like Escabedo have been approved for parole but remain behind bars waiting to start or finish classes required for release as the novel coronavirus stalks U.S prisons. Their families and inmate advocates are pushing officials for their release, saying they can complete life skills, recovery or other programs online or in the community.
“This is low- hanging fruit,” said David Raybin, a
Nashville lawyer who has been advocating for prisoners' release. “It's a benign thing to do, and I don't know why it isn't happening.”
At least 40,656 people in U.S. prisons have tested
positive for COVID-19 as of June 2, including more than 6,000 people last week alone — the second highest weekly number since the start of the pandemic, according to tracking from The Marshall
Project. At least 495 have died, the nonprofit media outlet found.
Stemming the spread of this coronavirus behind bars is challenging, experts said, because people are in close quarters and have limited ways to clean themselves and their surroundings.
Some states — and even the federal government — have recognized that and begun releasing certain inmates.
The U.S. Bureau of Prisons has placed more than 3,300 inmates on home confinement. California prison officials granted early releases to 3,500 inmates convicted of nonviolent crimes who were within 60 days of their earliest discharge date. As of early May, Wisconsin had released about 1,600 inmates, most of whom had been imprisoned for violating terms of their probation, parole or extended supervision.
But prison officials in some states said pre-release programming is critical to ensuring inmates don't wind up back in prison. Coronavirus fears, they said, don't change that.
“It would be a disservice to the hard-working, lawabiding citizens of this state to react in a way that jeopardizes or compromises their ability to live without fear of being further victimized,” said Dustin Krugel, a spokesman for the Tennessee Board of Parole.