Is Covid-19 telling us to end mass incarceration?

America’s criminal justice system is a worldwide disgrace. The ‘Land of the Free’ is anything but, with 2.3 million souls locked up; 22.1% of the world’s prisoners. This in a country with a measly 4.2% of the world population.

But America is suddenly releasing many non-violent, aging, unable to post bond folks and other less dangerous prisoners. Why? To prevent densely overcrowded jails from becoming Clovid-19 ‘hot spots’ of infection. That is not a fear; it’s a reality. Cook County Jail already has 38 infected prisoners and 9 guards. New York City tops Chicago with 103 prisoner Clovid cases. Chicago judges, under orders to release any prisoners not deemed to be a public threat, released 400 this week alone. That’s needless criminal justice expenditures that can redirected to staggering Clovid-19 containment expenses.

Alas, the Feds have not been so enlightened. US judges are denying requests for compassionate release from Chicago’s Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC), sighting the lack of an outbreak there. John Murphy, Executive Director of the Federal Public Defender Project for Illinois’ Northern District calls that approach “deeply short-sighted.” Just a couple hours later two MCC staff were diagnosed with Clovid-19. According to Murphy, “It’s already in the prisoner population…just not diagnosed.”

Many aspects of life in America are undergoing a sea change in behavior from the virus. When the crisis has passed let’s hope our obsession with incarceration and knee jerk response to ‘lock ‘em up’ will be one of the casualties. Let’s work for a time when the US, in terms of world leading number and percentage of prisoners, is no longer No. 1.