User:Knkn8/Decarceration in the United States

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Decarceration in the United States involves government policies and community campaigns aimed at reducing the number of people held in custody or custodial supervision. Decarceration, the opposite of incarceration, also entails reducing the rate of imprisonment at the federal, state and municipal level. Home to 5% of the global population but 25 percent of its prisoners, the U.S. possess the world's highest incarceration rate: 655 inmates for every 100,000 people, enough inmates to equal the populations of Philadelphia or Houston. The COVID-19 pandemic has reinvigorated the discussion surrounding decarceration as the spread of the virus poses a threat to the health of those incarcerated in prisons and detention centers where the ability to properly socially distance is limited.}}

The COVID Prison Project
The COVID Prison Project, composed of a group of public health scientists, is a database that provides real-time data on the state of the coronavirus pandemic within correctional facilities in the United States. According to the database, as of April 26, 2022, there had been 582,946 cases of COVID-19 among incarcerated persons in the US and 198,921 COVID-19 cases among staff working in prisons. From those cases, there had been 2,875 deaths of incarcerated individuals in prisons due to COVID-19 and 277 deaths of staff in prisons due to COVID-19.

Decarceration Rates During the Pandemic
According to data from the Prison Policy Initiative published in February 2022, while states' prison populations are lower than they have been in past years, the number of people released from prison has decreased. Nationwide, prisons released 10% fewer people in 2020 than in 2019 despite the pandemic. The PPI's data shows that the decrease in population size within prisons is not because of increased decarceration but instead can be attributed to reduced prison admissions as a mostly unintended consequence of delays within the court system.

The PPI's data also shows that despite policy changes at the beginning of the pandemic that engendered a decrease in jail populations, as of December 2021, jail populations were increasing, and in some cases populations were higher than they were before March 2020.

Related Pages
Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on prisons.

Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Social impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States.

San Francisco district attorney Chesa Boudin
San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, son of imprisoned Weather Underground member David Gilbert, said he reduced his city's jail population by 40% during the COVID-19 outbreak. Boudin told Forbes magazine (March 2020), "We can move to quickly and safely reduce the jail population so that jails are only holding people who are presenting an active threat of violence to the community." During the COVID-19 pandemic, Boudin joined 30 other prosecutors, including Rachel Rollins, Suffolk County, Massachusetts; Larry Krasner, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Joe Gonzales, Bexor County, Texas, in calling on local officials to "stop admitting people to jail absent a serious risk to the physical safety of the community." Boudin campaigned for D.A. on a platform of eliminating cash bail, establishing a unit to re-evaluate wrongful convictions and refusing to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with raids and arrests. The San Francisco Police Officers Association and other law enforcement groups spent $650,000 in an unsuccessful effort to defeat Boudin. Attorney General William Barr criticized Boudin and like-minded DA's, accusing them of undermining the police, letting criminals off the hook and endangering public safety. In an interview during the COVID-19 pandemic, Boudin questioned whether the nation "can safely continue the national system of mass incarceration. Why do we need to take people to jail for non-violent offenses if what they really need is drug treatment or mental health services?"