The Increased Exposure to Coronavirus (COVID-19) for Prisoners Justifies Early Release: and the Wider Implications of This for Sentencing – Reducing Most Prison Terms Due to the Harsh Incidental Consequences of Prison

Bagaric, Mirko; Isham, Peter; Svilar, Jennifer

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3754846

Cited by 2 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…In March 2020, Attorney General William Barr asked the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to transfer older and medically vulnerable prisoners to home confinement if they were low-risk and convicted of non-violent crimes (Office of the Attorney General [OAG] 2020a; Bagaric, Isham, and Svilar 2021). By April 3, 2020, only 552 prisoners had been released (Prescott, Pyle, and Starr 2020).…”

Section: B Decarceration In Practicementioning

confidence: 99%

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The COVID-19 Pandemic and the Future of the Prison

Maruna¹,

McNaull²,

O'Neill³

2022

Crime and Justice

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Since the discovery of the "jail disease," probably typhus, in the 18 th Century, health experts have recognized that the prison is a near perfect incubator of contagious disease. Early in the Covid-19 pandemic, therefore, public health authorities and human rights groups advocated immediate and sustained decarceration of overcrowded prisons to save lives and stop the spread of the virus. Yet, decarceration efforts globally were uneven and largely failed to live up to expectations. Instead, prison systems typically sought to control the spread of Covid-19 by imposing strict "lockdowns" on prisoner movement that bordered on long-term solitary confinement in many jurisdictions. The consequences of these severe conditions on prisoners' mental and physical health are only just emerging. The ramifications for future prison reform efforts may be more profound. If a deadly pandemic is not enough to instigate a reimagining of the role of prison in society, it is unclear what could. * * * *Disease has played a central role in shaping episodes of public controversy about the humanity of punishment. Disease has a distinctive power to strip away the general invisibility of life that takes place behind the walls of prison, and narrow the gulf that normally separates the fate of prisoners from the imagination of the free. These moments have been particularly consequential because of their potential to motivate legal elites ... to "see" the existing penal regime anew and actively to reimagine the American prison. (Simon 2013, p. 223) In his sweeping history of the "medical model" in prison, Jonathan Simon argues that disease has been the primary catalyst of change in prison policy and practice since the origins of the institution. Beginning with what the English reformer John Howard described as the "jail disease" (presumably typhus) that spread through prisons in the late 1700s, Simon argues that the correctional enterprise has been "repeatedly reshaped by moments of heightened concern about disease, prisons, and the general health of the public" (p. 218). New diseases and new discoveries in medicine and public health, he argues, led to "periodic transformations [in] … correctional philosophy and ultimately constitutional understandings of the prison" (p. 218). Labelled the worst public health crisis for a generation (Maycock and Dickson 2021; Maycock 2022), the Covid-19 pandemic appears to be a perfect example of history repeating itself. From its onset, the pandemic has highlighted the extreme vulnerability of incarcerated populations. By February 29, 2020, half of reported Wuhan Covid-19 cases were within the city's penal institutions, and an outbreak at a prison 450 miles away was traced to Wuhan officials who had visited and possibly infected seven prison guards and 200 prisoners (Barnert, Ahalt, and Williams 2020). The first Covid-19 diagnosis in a US prison was announced in March 2020 (Pitts and Inkpen 2020) and the first death was only weeks later, on March 26, 2020. Within eight months, the number of prisoner death...

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Section: B Decarceration In Practicementioning

confidence: 99%

“…17). Finally, the Trump Department of Justice announced that released individuals whose terms extended beyond the pandemic must be returned to prison (Bagaric, Isham, and Svilar 2021). The Biden administration rescinded that policy, giving discretion for sentences to be finished at home (Prison Policy Initiative 2022).…”

Section: B Decarceration In Practicementioning

confidence: 99%

The COVID-19 Pandemic and the Future of the Prison

Maruna¹,

McNaull²,

O'Neill³

2022

Crime and Justice

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“…It includes a fullthroated defence of retributionism, 33 as well as a call for electronic decarceration, which would electrocute "criminals" who fail to comply with release orders, such as leaving a designated area. 34 The strength of this literature is that it engages earnestly with the material conditions at hand and the currently existing alternatives. It also provides a nuanced critique of existing literature, particularly its failure to meaningfully engage with alternatives to prisons.…”

Section: Punitive Materialismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Doing Justice Without Prisons: A Framework to Build the Abolitionist Movement

Lamusse¹

2021

Socialism and Democracy

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scholars and activists have failed to seriously engage with alternatives to prisons. This is a fundamental issue. If we are committed to the abolition of prisons, then we must engage rigorously with how to reach that goal. Indeed, without a serious account of what could come after prisons, we limit the possibilities of a community-led, activist, scholarly and political movement. The state of abolitionist thought Prison, penal, carceral abolitionAlthough many Christian abolitionists trace their understandings of abolitionism to the teachings of Christ, 2 in the modern era the term "prison abolition" gained currency with the publication of Thomas Mathiesen's The Politics of Abolition in 1974. 3 Early definitions of prison abolition involved a moral, political, and pragmatic commitment to ending or significantly reducing the use of imprisonment as a response to social harm. 4 In context of the United States, prison abolition is often interpreted as a commitment not only to ending imprisonment, but also to ending the conditions that make prisons possible. 5 For abolitionists such as Angela Davis, this means that prison abolition is also a feminist, anti-racist,

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The Increased Exposure to Coronavirus (COVID-19) for Prisoners Justifies Early Release: and the Wider Implications of This for Sentencing – Reducing Most Prison Terms Due to the Harsh Incidental Consequences of Prison

Cited by 2 publications

References 19 publications

The COVID-19 Pandemic and the Future of the Prison

The COVID-19 Pandemic and the Future of the Prison

Doing Justice Without Prisons: A Framework to Build the Abolitionist Movement

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