Demanding decarceration during the COVID-19 pandemic: Safety in jails is public safety

Demanding decarceration during the COVID-19 pandemic: Safety in jails is public safety

JURIST Guest Columnists Stefanie Mundhenk, a fourth-year JD/MA student graduating from Georgetown University Law Center, and Emily M. Croucher, a third-year law student graduating from the University of California, Irvine School of Law write, “There is no way to make jails safe from a viral pandemic like COVID-19, and there is also no way to socially distance in jails. Access to healthcare in jail is atrocious. To that end, we believe decarceration is the only moral answer to the question of what to do with individuals detained pretrial.”