Jail conundrum
We’re all vulnerable to the coronavirus, but inmates are at risk of a catastrophe in lockup.
Roughly 300 people are booked into the Harris County Jail each day, and one of these days — sooner rather than later — one of them is going to be carrying the novel coronavirus.
What will happen next isn’t difficult to predict: Given the tight confines of life in detention, more people will get sick, very quickly, and then more the next day and more the day after that.
That’s the nightmare Sheriff Ed Gonzalez is imagining at the jail, which houses about 8,800 inmates.
“It would be a devastating result,” Gonzalez told the editorial board Friday.
The roughly two-week lag between when a person is infected with the virus — and therefore becomes contagious — and when they begin showing symptoms of the illness means that once someone inside the jail takes ill, they will almost certainly already have exposed many others — inmates, guard, visitors, health care workers and more.
“Jails are a breeding ground for illnesses,” Gonzalez said. “We’ve seen that before, from the measles and other outbreaks. We’ve had deaths in the past when illness has spread through the population.”
Given the way the virus is spreading outside of the jail each day, every new booking makes catastrophe a little more likely.
All of us are worried about the virus, of course. Worried for ourselves, our children, our friends and our elderly parents. But the sheriff ’s alarm should remind us that there are thousands of people in our region who are especially vulnerable in this crisis, and not just because of their age or health condition.
Many others simply have little or no control over whom they come into contact with. The disabled; those who are shut in at home; residents of nursing facilities; and patients in hospitals and rehabilitation centers. All are dependent on others, from neighbors who check on them to facility managers who keep them healthy.
Government officials must look after those who can’t or aren’t allowed to look after themselves. That means bolstering funding for Meals on Wheels and other aid for the elderly or needy. It means providing food for poor children who are missing school, such as the “grab and go” meals Katy ISD announced Friday. It means, as some governments have done, suspending evictions to avoid turning out people who are behind on rent in the face of escalating risks to their health.
There is no end to the special needs that will surface over the coming weeks. But the jail populations are especially vulnerable because their welfare depends almost entirely on whether leaders such as Gonzalez choose to act decisively, humanely and wisely to protect them.
Gonzalez says he’s already begun asking judges to consider releasing inmates whose health risks are high and risks to public safety low. “These conversations are happening now,” he said Friday. He’s working to reduce the number of people arrested each day — by his own sheriff ’s deputies and, he hopes, by city and other area police. “We need to be very deliberate in making these arrests,” he said, adding that of course public safety will remain a priority.
He called it a blessing that his department moved early to adopt its cite-andrelease program. He’s right. Many who don’t need to be in jail — that is, who pose little or no risk to the public — shouldn’t be there now, not when the risk of eventually catching the coronavirus appears so high.
He said the jail is considering reducing or even eliminating visitation — a step the state prison system announced Friday — and beefing up medical screening for lawyers, health workers and other employees who enter and leave the jail each day.
Those steps won’t reduce risks entirely, and limiting visitation may increase mental health stresses already prevalent in the jail.
It’s a conundrum. But the sheriff, area police chiefs and the judges who can order inmates’ release must act boldly to reduce the odds that many of them will get sick.
We really are — all of us — in this together. While we’re taking care of our own, we should remember the most vulnerable among us who don’t have that option.