[Pnews] It’s Time to Start Releasing Some Prisoners With Violent Records

Prisoner News ppnews at freedomarchives.org
Tue Apr 14 10:23:39 EDT 2020


https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/04/combat-covid-release-prisoners-violent-cook.html 



  It’s Time to Start Releasing Some Prisoners With Violent Records

J.J. Prescott, Benjamin Pyle, Sonja Starr - April 13, 2020
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Prisons and jails are fast becoming an epicenter of the COVID-19 
pandemic. Last week, for instance, the New York Times reported 
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/us/coronavirus-cook-county-jail-chicago.html> 
that Cook County jail was “now the nation’s largest-known source of 
coronavirus infections.” After far too much lost time, some governors 
and criminal justice officials are finally trying to mitigate the damage 
by releasing inmates or transferring them to home confinement.

To succeed, these steps must extend to prisoners with violent records. 
This should be obvious based on sheer numbers. People with violent 
convictions make up a majority**of the total state prison population. 
Because sentences for violent crimes are longer, they make up an even 
larger percentage of the older detainees most vulnerable to COVID-19: 
about two out of every three prisoners over age 55.

So far, this reality is being ignored. Efforts to move people out of 
prisons and jails have mainly focused on the lowest-hanging fruit: those 
detained for inability to pay bail, technical parole violations, minor 
misdemeanors, and the like. Almost all these measures have excluded 
people convicted of violent crimes.

Many prepandemic criminal justice reforms have also focused on 
nonviolent offenders only, so we shouldn’t be surprised. For many, 
people with violent convictions seem dangerous, and the idea of granting 
them any kind of relief is simply anathema.

But how dangerous /is /it to release prisoners with violent records? We 
recently carried out an empirical study 
<https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3571912> using 
post-release crime data on hundreds of thousands of such prisoners. We 
found that it is much less dangerous than you probably think. And during 
this pandemic, we can add, it seems doubtless much /less /dangerous than 
keeping them behind bars.

Our study found that among those released after serving a sentence for a 
violent crime, about one of every 10 releasees was sent back to prison 
for any new crime within the next three years. Only one of every 20 had 
another violent crime in three years. In fact, re-offense rates have 
been consistently shown to be lower for people released after serving 
sentences for violent crimes than those released for /nonviolent /crimes.

Crime rates are even lower if you look at older prisoners—the ones most 
seriously threatened by COVID-19. We looked at more than 7,000 
individuals over age 55 who had served at least five years in state 
prisons for a violent offense. Fewer than 1 percent of such individuals 
were re-incarcerated for any new crime in the three years after release, 
and fewer than 0.5 percent for another violent crime.

Our study was bigger and more recent than most, but our findings are 
consistent with the patterns we found in a comprehensive review of the 
literature. Moreover, all those low re-offense rates were for normal 
releases from prison into society. But “releases” now need not simply 
mean flinging open the prison gates indiscriminately. It could mean 
temporary transfers to home confinement for the duration of the 
emergency. Protective measures like electronic monitors are also available.

For most, such approaches should reduce crime further yet. (Crime is 
down overall since lockdown measures took effect.) Domestic violence 
cases are a potential exception, but such individuals could be released 
to homes other than those of their victims. Prisons will also have to 
work to identify safe housing options for those who might otherwise be 
rendered homeless.

Of course, at many prisons there could be /some /individuals who really 
are so dangerous that they cannot be safely released, even to home 
confinement. But the data tell us that such cases are likely to be 
relatively few, and officials should be required to identify them based 
on clear evidence. It certainly shouldn’t be assumed to be true of /all 
/who have violent convictions. And once as many people as possible have 
been removed from facilities, it will be easier to practice social 
distancing among those who remain.

Are crime rates among those released likely to be /zero/? No—but they 
should be close to it. The stakes of doing nothing, though, have never 
been higher. Categorically refusing to remove violent offenders from 
these virus hotbeds does not protect public safety. It endangers it.

Our crowded prisons and jails cannot realistically implement social 
distancing, and indeed face challenges with basic hygiene (for instance, 
bans on sanitizer). So COVID-19 has and will continue to rapidly spread 
behind bars. This is a huge risk to the more than 2 million people 
incarcerated in the United States, plus hundreds of thousands of staff.

And COVID behind bars threatens everyone outside too. Staff—and some 
detainees—come and go daily. Some will bring COVID in with them, and 
after it has spread, much larger numbers will take it out. Plus, sick 
prisoners will have to be moved to local hospitals, competing for scarce 
resources.

Prisons and jails are like concerts, conferences, and cruise ships: 
places where crowds in confined spaces can spread the virus to many, 
many people fast. But unlike these other sites, they won’t be shut down. 
So COVID outbreaks behind bars threaten our entire society’s ability to 
control the pandemic and return to normal life.

No prisoner should suddenly face a death sentence instead of whatever 
penalty a court gave them because state, local, and federal officials 
refuse to acknowledge these realities. Nor is there any justification 
for imposing this risk on prison guards, or on their families, or on the 
public at large.

While some systems have started releasing people, violent-offense 
exclusions amount to an exception that swallows the rule. For example, 
on March 26, Attorney General William Barr issued a memo 
<https://sentencing.typepad.com/files/bop-memo.home-confinement.pdf> 
urging federal prisons to transfer older and medically vulnerable 
prisoners to home confinement—but it was limited to those with 
nonviolent offenses who were deemed low-risk.

The result? By April 3, reportedly, only 552 prisoners 
<https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/03/barr-to-speed-releases-at-federal-prisons-hard-hit-by-virus-164175> 
had been transferred home pursuant to Barr’s memo. That’s out of about 
175,000 people in Federal Bureau of Prisons custody. Unsurprisingly, 
COVID-19 has continued to spread through the system. In light of this 
reality, Barr issued new guidance 
<https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000171-4255-d6b1-a3f1-c6d51b810000> 
getting rid of the restrictions he had imposed on home transfers. That’s 
an important step, but it came late, and the new memo /still /emphasizes 
the need to avoid too-liberal releases that could lead to “violence or 
heinous sex offenses.” And overwhelmingly, the states—which hold the 
vast majority of American prisoners—have, if anything, done less to 
protect those with violent records.

The COVID-19 situation in prisons is a moral test that, so far, our 
society is failing. Even when our own safety is at stake, we make 
knee-jerk assumptions about people who once committed a violent crime: 
that they cannot ever reform. These assumptions are not borne out by 
data. And right now, they are blinding us to what is needed to protect 
all of us.


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