Can COVID-19 Teach Us How to End Mass Incarceration?

Executive Director Amy Fettig penned an essay in the University of Miami Law Review that argues that federal, state and local government response to the COVID-19 epidemic in prisons and jails was largely incompetent, inhumane, and contrary to sound public health policy, resulting in preventable death and suffering for both incarcerated people and corrections staff. However, the lessons learned from these failures provide a roadmap for policy priorities and legal reform in our ongoing need to decarcerate and end the era of mass incarceration, including: rolling back extreme sentences, ensuring that decarceration efforts center racial justice as a goal both prospectively and retrospectively, and promoting voting rights for all regardless of conviction history.

Read the full essay here.