North Carolina releasing some inmates early

North Carolina has agreed to release 3,500 prison inmates early to reduce the risk that they will catch or spread the coronavirus. The inmates will be released over the next six months to finish out their sentences in home confinement.

The release is the largest by any state since the start of the pandemic in March 2020, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, a criminal justice research organization.

The virus has devastated prisons, jails and detention centers across the country. More than 500,000 inmates have been infected, and nearly 2,500 have died, according to a New York Times database.

The North Carolina agreement came in settlement of a lawsuit that accused the state of operating overcrowded, unsanitary prisons that fed the spread of the coronavirus.

Among those who will have priority for early release are inmates who have been convicted of nonviolent offenses, or who are medically vulnerable, 65 or older or due to be released within the next year.

“There was a chronic overpopulation problem in North Carolina’s prisons even before the pandemic,” said Kristi Graunke, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. “The pandemic forced us all to confront just how dangerous overcrowding and mass incarceration can be for people. And we saw people getting sick.”