a pandemic, officials rush to close any place that threatens to become a centre of transmission. If fewer people mingle inside cruise ships, schools, churches or retirement homes then the risk of mass infections falls. Yet for more than 2m Americans squeezed into jails and prisons, along with many staff, a shutdown is not an option. Instead, such places risk becoming hotspots for disease.
“Universities and hotels you can close. I’m left with people I can’t send home,”, says Sheriff Dart. Instead he improvises. He clumps new arrivals in cohorts by the day they come in, hoping to isolate potentially sick ones for at least a week to prevent any infection spreading. Tents for quarantine are now going up in place of a mental-health centre. Staff take inmates’ temperatures, quiz them about sickness in the family and spray food trays with bleach water more often than before.
Inmates are often packed close and obliged to buy their own soap—seen as a luxury, not a basic need—from meagre earnings. They will struggle to fend off infection. Pam Oliver, a sociologist who studies prisons in Wisconsin, calls the lack of hygiene “extremely dangerous”. The current crisis at least is raising public awareness of “severe overcrowding and unsanitary conditions” for those locked up, says Inimai Chettiar, of Justice Action Network, which campaigns for reform.
Another effort in many states aims to prevent people entering jails in the first place. Sheriff Dart in Chicago says daily arrivals have recently fallen by nearly half, from 100, as police issue more citations and arrest fewer offenders. That is becoming common in dozens of counties and cities. In Baltimore the state attorney, Marilyn Mosby, has told prosecutors to stop charging non-violent offenders such as those caught dealing drugs, trespassing or illegally selling sex.
For profit jails!
rob_england Not the best headline...😬
They have to be evacuated immediately. It's two dangerous. In china things happened that all prisoners were infected in a jell....
They can ALL die... I don't care...
Cue the soap jokes
jennycohn1 Oh it will. Unfortunately it will be by killing most of them
Laurie_Garrett Huh. The rest of us should be protesting against criminals.
I thought that Trump stayed he was going to ship all the immigrants home because of the coronavirus. Why the fuck does it matter. Get these people on a plane or bus and get them out of here.
Ballooning budget costs to prevent panic and spread within detained population. It could rend it's populous very quickly.Dissolute, acerbic inmates may adventitiously bequeath it around. Could lead to rioting requiring curfew. Preclude this by ER use outside of the prison system.
jennycohn1 American prisoners, intimately familiar with the behavior & thinking of the system's ruling class of guards, staff, & wardens, imagine that there's a contingency plan to gas the population.
They should be provided soap.
Wow, didn't know The Economist was that tough on crime... :p
Laurie_Garrett It’s disgusting! Also many guards are begging visitors to our prisons to complain about the lack of soap in the restrooms. They are terrified COVID-19 will enter and decimate not only prisoners but them too!
baratunde Goddam it give them some soap you animals
They dont have soap 😦 WTF
Now the state can also save on feeding the scumbags. Great outcome.
This so pathetic.
It has come to this
This monsterous, people should not have to go on a hunger strike for soap. I am horrified that this and worse are taking place.
Laurie_Garrett GOPethics are vile
Detention should not be a death sentence. Overcrowding, unhygienic conditions, lack of sanitation, poor nutrition and inadequate medical care promote transmission of disease at ICE and Border Patrol immigration detention. Release the detainees ASAP.
This 'Covid-19 may bring some long-overdue change' what by killing a bunch of prisoners regardless of their sentence? So callous...
Let em starve
USA = third world
This headline is gross
Headline is savage💀
they are aren’t going to eat until they have some soap to drop eh?
On a rope.
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