The Prisoner Dilemma in the Age of Coronavirus
by Alan M. Dershowitz • March 17, 2020 at 3:00 pm
In the event of an outbreak, guards and other staff are likely to refuse to come to work, thus raising the risk of violence among prisoners.
The time to act, in order to prevent these bad outcomes, is before there are outbreaks. A prison sentence, or the denial of bail, are not supposed to be sentences of death or disease. Steps should be taken now to reduce the risks not only to prisoners but to those who come in contact with them in prison or upon release.
Among these preventive steps should be the following: allowing elderly non-violent prisoners who are near the end of their sentences to be sent home; those who still have considerable time to serve should be temporarily furloughed to home confinement, subject to increased punishment if they violate the strict conditions of the furlough...
The US has more prisoners than any Western democracy. Because of our overly long sentences — even for non-violent first offenders — many are old and infirm. We also have many presumptively innocent defendants in jail awaiting trial, and many others awaiting appeal.
It is inevitable that there will be outbreaks of coronavirus in prisons and jails, as, in the past, there have been outbreaks of other contagious illnesses such as Legionnaires disease. Other institutions of confinement, such as nursing homes, have also experienced quickly spreading contagions.
Once an outbreak occurs, the options will be limited. It is unlikely that contagious inmates would be released; they would probably be quarantined in the prison, which may mean solitary confinement. Nor will there be sufficient medical staff and equipment to treat them.
