Releasing inmates, screening staff: US jails limit virus risks

NEW YORK: The coronavirus is invading US jails and prisons, prompting inmate releases, reduced bail requirements and other extraordinary measures as officials rush to avert a potentially disastrous spread of the virus among crowded inmate populations. In New York City, where at least 29 inmates and 17 staff in the jail system have been infected by the coronavirus, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Sunday 23 inmates would be released before day’s end and the city would decide within 24 hours whether to release up to 200 more.

He said inmates would be screened to identify those at risk from the virus, which has killed more than 14,000 people across the globe, including 415 in the United States. Officials were still determining how many inmates ultimately should be let out of the city’s 11 jails, who will be eligible and how they will be supervised. “It’s very thorny,” de Blasio told a news conference. City residents need to “have relative comfort” that people who are released are unlikely to commit a “serious crime,” he added.

New York City’s Board of Corrections,

an independent oversight body, has called on the mayor to release around 2,000 inmates who were severely sick, held on low-level offenses or jailed for parole violations. “It’s the right number to make it work,” board member Dr Robert Cohen said. New York City’s jail system is among relatively few that have announced confirmed cases of the coronavirus among inmates or staff. But other jails nationwide are moving to reduce inmate populations before it arrives.

In Oklahoma City, the Oklahoma County Jail is working with judges and district attorneys to secure court orders for the release of inmates held on minor misdemeanors and considered minimal security risks. Though the jail has no confirmed coronavirus cases among its 1,500 inmates, the goal is “to get out as many people as possible, keeping in mind the safety of the public,” said spokesman Mark Myers.

Jails typically hold people for relatively short periods as they await trial and have more flexibility to reduce populations than state or federal prisons, whose inmates have been convicted and sentenced. While many state prisons have announced steps to limit the spread of the virus such as banning visitors, they generally require a court order to release inmates. Federal prisons face similar restrictions, although President Donald Trump said on Sunday that he would consider an executive order to release “totally nonviolent prisoners” from those facilities. — Reuters