Law Commons^™

Pretrial Detention In The Time Of Covid-19, Jenny E. Carroll

Faculty Scholarship

It is hard to overstate the impact of COVID-19. When it comes to the criminal justice system, the current COVID-19 crisis has shone a light on pre-existing flaws. Long before the first confirmed case in Seattle or elsewhere, America’s jails and prisons were particularly susceptible to contagions, exacerbated by problems from overcrowding to over policing to lack of reentry programs. This Essay focuses on one aspect of the challenges the criminal justice system faces in light of COVID-19 and beyond—that of a pretrial detention system that falls more harshly on poor and minority defendants, has swollen local jail populations, and …

Covid-19 And Prisoners’ Rights, Gregory Bernstein, Stephanie Guzman, Maggie Hadley, Rosalyn M. Huff, Alison Hung, Anita N.H. Yandle, Alexis Hoag, Bernard E. Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

As COVID-19 continues to spread rapidly across the country, the crowded and unsanitary conditions in prisons, jails, juvenile detention, and immigration detention centers leave incarcerated individuals especially vulnerable. This chapter will discuss potential avenues for detained persons and their lawyers seeking to use the legal system to obtain relief, including potential release, during this extraordinary, unprecedented crisis.

Linked Fate: Justice And The Criminal Legal System During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Susan P. Sturm, Faiz Pirani, Hyun Kim, Natalie Behr, Zachary D. Hardwick

Faculty Scholarship

The concept of “linked fate” has taken on new meaning in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. People all over the world – from every walk of life, spanning class, race, gender, and nationality – face a potentially deadly threat requiring cooperation and sacrifice. The plight of the most vulnerable among us affects the capacity of the larger community to cope with, recover, and learn from COVID-19’s devastating impact. COVID-19 makes visible and urgent the need to embrace our linked fate, “develop a sense of commonality and shared circumstances,” and unstick dysfunctional and inequitable political and legal systems.

Nowhere is …

Understanding Violent-Crime Recidivism, J. J. Prescott, Benjamin David Pyle, Sonja B. Starr

Faculty Scholarship

People convicted of violent crimes constitute a majority of the imprisoned population but are generally ignored by existing policies aimed at reducing mass incarceration. Serious efforts to shrink the large footprint of the prison system will need to recognize this fact. This point is especially pressing at the time of this writing, as states and the federal system consider large-scale prison releases motivated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Those convicted of violent crimes constitute a large majority of older prisoners, who are extremely vulnerable to the spread of the virus behind bars. Excluding them from protective measures will deeply undermine those …