Decarcerating jails

Many jails were already overcrowded, and that is growing now that courts have suspending their proceedings, trapping people who are held pretrial. In Pinellas County, Florida, 200 people are sleeping on the jail floor; Tennessee‘s rural jails are gravely overcrowded as well; and the chief physican for Rikers Island jail implored New York officials to release people as soon as possible.

In some places, judges and officials in charge of jails are taking steps to shrink jails. For now, this has mostly involved releasing more people pretrial than before on personal bonds, and releasing some people who only had a short time left to serve; these are both longtime demands for criminal justice advocates. Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County (Pittsburgh) rolled out plans to release 100 people a day on Thursday. In Alamada County, California (Oakland), the sheriff announced on Thursday the release of over 300 people fitting in both categories. Further south, in Los Angeles, the sheriff is seeking early release, though as of Wednesday the jail population was down only four percent from two weeks ago. The Los Angeles Times editorial board called on him to do more.

In Cook County (Chicago), public officials have begun coordinating to release some people at risk of contracting the virus from jail. The sheriff of Colorado’s Jefferson County said on Thursday his office would review people who have served at least 50 percent of their sentence for early release. In Hillsborough County, Florida (Tampa), a judge granted the sheriff the authority to release people detained over low-level offenses; the sheriff then released 164 people. Similar polices are in place in Ohio’s Mercer County, in Virginia’s Prince William County, and in Florida’s Volusia County. In three Alabama counties, a judge ordered the release of anyone detained for a failure to pay a bond of less than $5,000. In Travis County, Texas (Austin), judges are granting personal bonds to more defendants than usual. Lake County, Illinois, and McLennan County, Texas, are moving to grant personal bonds to people charged with low-level offenses such as theft of less than $750⁠—moves that here, as elsewhere, raise questions as to why these people were detained pretrial in the first place.