From Forbes:
For people of color, the parallels between this country’s criminal legal system and the pandemic are uncanny. Mass incarceration and COVID-19 have both had an outsize impact on Black and brown families, resulting in loss and suffering on an unimaginable scale. And both revealed that institutions tasked with keeping people safe and healthy woefully failed to do so.
But as we enter the second half of 2021, the fear that gripped this country during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic is fading. So is the furor and intensity of last summer’s protests in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.
As a longtime criminal justice practitioner and as a person of color, I feel dismay as I watch the urgency dissipate. In an unprecedented way, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed the public health risks that overcrowded jails and prisons routinely pose. The pandemic also revealed the potential for criminal legal system reform, with some policymakers embracing measures that advocates have long urged, like cutting arrests and releasing people from jails and prisons to make facilities safer. At the height of the pandemic, the nation’s incarcerated population dropped below 2 million for the first time in decades. Continue reading >>>
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