Professor John Pfaff wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post examining the justice system’s attitude towards violent criminals in the prison system and how that attitude has not changed while coronavirus continues to spread.
The pandemic poses an outsize threat to the nation’s jails and prisons, where confined populations can’t take the recommended precautions and often lack access to such basics as soap and hand sanitizer — sometimes even running water. Federal and state authorities, as a result, have begun to release thousands of inmates.
The focus, however, has been on low-level offenders. “There are some at-risk inmates who are non-violent and pose minimal likelihood of recidivism and who might be safer serving their sentences in home confinement,” Attorney General William Barr wrote tepidly late last month in a memorandum to the Bureau of Prisons director. And in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom said that his state’s efforts “will be for those nonviolent offenses, and we will do it in a very systematic way.”
The debate over which prisoners to release early and what to do with them rarely considers those charged with or convicted of violent crimes, except to declare that they should stay behind bars. “I have no interest — and I want to make this crystal clear — in releasing violent criminals from our system,” Newsom said. Gov. Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania, meanwhile, proposed a furlough policy that excluded, among others, anyone with a current or even prior conviction for a violent crime.