Punishing someone proportionally to their crime is a pillar of civilized society. The 8th Amendment, which forbids “cruel and unusual punishment,” was the founders’ way of ensuring America abided by this core tenant of civility. Regardless of their crime, incarcerating a citizen in a building rife with a highly deadly, highly contagious pathogen is a grave violation of this principle. To do so would be to gamble on a death sentence, no different than sending them to face a Russian Roulette style firing squad. Sentencing untried and nonviolent Americans to such a fate is not only barbaric, it is exacerbating the country’s ongoing health and economic crises.

As the United States has finally accepted the need for robust social distancing to halt the spread of COVID-19, American prisons, which have been criminally overcrowded and unsanitary long before the pandemic, have been granted a particularly cruel reprieve from the otherwise mandatory practice.

It’s no surprise that American penitentiaries are breeding grounds for COVID-19. Cook County jail, which sits on the outskirts of Chicago, is the largest known source of positive cases. At least 32 deaths and another 1,300 cases have been traced back to American prisons. Ghastly living conditions, little access to healthcare, and poor nutrition have made incarcerated Americas hyper-vulnerable to the virus. Packed in shoulder-to-shoulder, prisoners face an increased chance of contracting the contagion and dying from it.

Ignoring Prisons Will Make the Pandemic Worse

Prisons have become incubation centers for COVID-19. Even if the nation can outlast the pathogen through social distancing and access to healthcare, prisons, which are unable to benefit from either of these countermeasures, will still be hotbeds of infection.

Even if COVID-19 were to dissipate to the point where free-Americans can return to their everyday lives, the coronavirus will still live inside America’s prisons, eking out and reinfecting the rest of the population. Every day, hundreds of thousands of un-incarcerated Americans will enter a prison brimming with COVID-19 to work as guards, cooks, clerks, or any other role required to support the world’s largest prison population. Once their shift is over, they will return home, bringing the pathogen with them and re-exposing their communities.

If significant steps aren’t taken to ensure incarcerated Americans are protected from the pandemic, the drastic countermeasures the nation is currently undertaking will be in vain. All the sacrifices — the canceled vacations, the hour-long lines to buy groceries, and the time away from those we care most deeply about — are all at risk of being for naught. To make sure this doesn’t happen, it’s crucial to ensure all Americans, including those behind bars, are properly protected from COVID-19.

Simple Solutions

Fortunately, the solutions to this problem are simple and commonsense. The problem is that there are too many people in prison. The solution is to stop putting more in and to let some out.

To prevent the situation from worsening, courts should immediately suspend the need for defendants to pay bail to await trial outside of prison. As only the affluent can afford it, usually the rich pay bail and walk out the courtroom door while the poor are sent to prison.

Even during normal times, imprisoning a citizen who has yet to have their day in court merely because they lack copious financial resources is a highly-unethical practice; when they are to be confined in a structure rampant with a deadly pathogen, it is an unquestionable evil. Courts offer bail to those that are not believed to be a flight risk or a danger to the public. If a judge sees no reason a defendant can’t await trial outside of jail, it’s foolish to risk their life and exacerbate the pandemic simply because they cannot pay.

While suspending bail payments will stop the problem from worsening, America's prisons will remain a liability until their populations are decreased. The only way to decrease the population is to release prisoners so that the remaining inhabitants can engage in a form of jailhouse social distancing. Posing no threat to the community, those convicted of a nonviolent offense are the obvious candidates for release. As a body in prison sustains the environment the coronavirus needs to outlast the nation's countermeasures, incarcerating nonviolent offenders endangers the public far more than releasing them.

Solutions that Fit the Problem

Despite the clear need for these solutions, some will misunderstand them as “radical” or “extreme.” There are two reasons for this misconception.

First, many Americans hesitate to release prisoners before their sentences have expired. With their menacing infrastructure and militant culture, American prisons have tricked the national subconscious into believing that every inmate is a ruthless killer; men so inhuman that it takes cold iron bars, razor wire fences, and concrete guard towers to merely contain them. With this false image, it is no wonder the thought of early releases is met with hostility.

Despite this stereotype, the data shows that a large number of incarcerated Americans could be released today with no increased danger to the public. According to a recent study by the Brennan Center for Justice , there are approximately 576,000 Americans incarcerated with little public safety rationale. As previously noted, as the coronavirus needs prisons to survive, not releasing these inmates endangers the public far more than releasing them.

The second reason these solutions will be met with skepticism is that many Americans have yet to realize the potential catastrophes of COVID-19. For those that haven’t witnessed the apocalyptic scenarios of New York City or New Orleans, the shocking death count projections sound like fantasies and fail to sink in. Even if not every American realizes it, COVID-19 is a once in a generation pathogen. It has already killed seven times as many Americans as 9/11 and brought the economy to screening halt . Just like the need for a single-payer healthcare system to combat the outbreak, waiving bail payments and releasing prisoners only seem “radical” if one fails to grasp the severity of the situation.

Execution by Coronavirus is Evil. Here’s How You Can Help

Placing the practical effects of releasing prisoners and waiving bail payments to the side, no human deserves the potential execution by virus that awaits them in America’s coronavirus prisons. The 8th Amendment prohibits “cruel and unusual punishment;” locking someone in a COVID-19-infested prison to die a slow, horrid death is a textbook definition of "cruel and unusual." Until the pandemic has passed, no individual that is not a danger to the public should be kept behind bars. Imprisoning them not only violates their Constitutional rights, it risks their life and the lives of millions of Americans as well.

If you’d like to help Americans avoid the barbaric punishment of being incarcerated in a COVID-19 infested prison, please consider donating to any of these non-profit organizations. Thank you.

The Emergency Release Fund is a grassroots organization that posts bail for transgender Americans.

https://emergencyreleasefund.com/

COVID Bail Out NYC is a people-powered initiative to bail out individuals from NYC jails, focusing on those most at-risk to the COVID virus. They accept donations via PayPal, ActBlue, and Venmo.

https://www.covidbailout.org/

Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI) has mobilized to address the urgent needs for housing and care of people bailed out by COVID Bail Out NYC, among other avenues.

https://donorbox.org/nyc-post-release-support-services-fund

The Marshal Project is a nonprofit news organization that reports on the need for U.S. criminal justice reform.

https://www.themarshallproject.org/donate?via=navright

Prison Policy Initiative provides cutting-edge research on America's mass incarceration problem.

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/contact.html

Prison Legal News is a monthly periodical that reports on criminal justice issues. They are a project of the Human Rights Defense Center.