Today’s topic is COVID-19 in our jails and prisons. There is so much wrong with our criminal legal system. People are dying. Keep in mind that not every person incarcerated is a caged monster. Many of these people have families to go home to.
Part of the argument is that prisoners cannot maintain the 6 feet distancing required by the CDC because of the size of the cages that they live in and the number of people who live in them. PPE equipment is not readily available. Slowing the spread of COVID-19 is not possible when testing is limited or unavailable. So, prisoners contract the virus, and the reality is that jails and prisons are breeding grounds for poor health. The result is that people die needlessly from the virus, leaving their children and grandchildren never to see them again. These are the same reasons that COVID-19 spreads in poorer sections of town. Corrections workers risk their own health as well.
It is the goal of some politicians to free early non-violent offenders who are scheduled for release.
Jabari Brisport wrote an opinion in the 9/22/2020 Gotham Gazette, “We must also remember the more than 300 people in the Buffalo Federal Immigration Detention Facility in Batavia, New York who are similarly experiencing horrid conditions. The federal government must halt its inhumane family separation and detention policies, and instead work towards comprehensive reform that supports our immigrant neighbors and ultimately puts an end to detention centers that are by their nature harmful and deadly.”
As prisons are de facto treatment centers for the mentally ill, this applies to them as well.
David Geiger is a licensed and awarded electrical engineer who spent 7 years in psychiatric hospitals and over 40 years since 1979 in the courts as a result of his schizophrenia