Mid-week round up of some stories on impact of the coronavirus on criminal justice, crime and punishment

Just a few days since my last few round-ups of headlines here (March 12) and here (March 13), there are now far too many stories about the impact of the coronavirus on criminal justice, crime and punishment to even begin to cover this part of our new world order with any comprehensiveness.  But here are a trio of pieces and commentaries on various fronts that stood out to me as I reviewed some headlines:

• "‘We Are Not a Hospital’: A Prison Braces for the Coronavirus"

• "Coronavirus will turn our prisons into death zones without reform"

• "The Prisoner Dilemma in the Age of Coronavirus"(by Prez Trump's (former?) lawyer Alan Dershowitz)

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• "Attorney General Barr: Prioritize investigations of fraudsters exploiting coronavirus pandemic"

• "Norway Hands Out $2,000 Fines Or Jail For Ignoring Coronavirus Quarantine"

• "Fort Worth police won’t arrest people for low-level crimes amid coronavirus outbreak"

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• "Here's What Happened To Two Prisoners When A Guard Got The Coronavirus"

• "Employee at New York's Sing Sing prison tests positive for coronavirus"

• "Pueblo coronavirus case is a public defender"

UPDATE: Because it has some specific federal prison reform recommendations, I wanted to add here this new FoxNews commentary headlined "Tolman and Harris: Coronavirus crisis requires this action be taken for elderly prison inmates." Here is an excerpt:

Even before we were hit by an almost unprecedented health crisis, the Office of the Inspector General found that the Bureau of Prison (BOP) facilities lacked the appropriate staffing, and provided limited training, to care for aging inmates. These problems will only get worse during this pandemic as prisons struggle to maintain staffing levels, manage social distancing protocols among the general population, and quarantine and treat the sick.

Older inmates (age 60 and older) are far and away the most expensive to incarcerate, mostly due to their medical needs. In fact, that same Inspector General’s report cited BOP data showing that facilities with the highest percentages of aging inmates spend five times more per inmate on medical care, and 14 times more per inmate on medication, than facilities with the lowest percentage of aging inmates.

In 2013, the cost of caring for aging inmates at the federal level topped $880 million, roughly 20 percent of the federal corrections budget. Now imagine the cost, societal and financial, once coronavirus infects a jail or prison, which is just a matter of time.

Given the current crisis, we are hopeful President Trump would work diligently to ensure his administration facilitates the transfer of these elderly, sick and vulnerable people to home confinement as soon as possible. Similar to a nursing home, the disease will spread through these facilities like fire through a dry barn, endangering corrections officers, prison staff, healthcare workers and the surrounding community, and sending costs soaring well past $1 billion.

The Elderly Home Detention Pilot Program — re-authorized and expanded as part of the bipartisan First Step Act — allows nonviolent federal prisoners to be transferred to home confinement if they are 60 years old or older and have served two-thirds of their sentence.  Now, Congress is considering HR 4018, a measure that builds on already-enacted bipartisan reforms, allowing the two-thirds calculation to include good-time credits, meaning additional elderly prisoners would be eligible for home detention.

In addition to this technical fix, we would argue that this emergency legislation warrants lowering the 60-year threshold to 55, the age at which recidivism rates drastically decline.  We would further advocate for the transfer of any inmates that are either terminally ill (as the compassionate release provision already allows) or have a medical condition that makes them more susceptible to contracting COVID-19.  To be clear, the Bureau of Prisons would still have ultimate control over whether an inmate would be eligible, and wouldn’t free people like Bernie Madoff, who are serving life sentences.

Given the current crisis, we are hopeful President Trump would work diligently to ensure his administration facilitates the transfer of these elderly, sick and vulnerable people to home confinement as soon as possible. In fact, an emergency proposal should give the BOP the flexibility to suspend its own regulations and transfer inmates as soon as possible, and/or give inmates the opportunity to take their request for transfer to home confinement directly to a judge....

The Senate is poised this week to pass additional measures to help families and businesses suffering the economic costs of this crisis. That package should include simple measures to protect people’s health by transferring deserving elderly and sick prisoners to home detention as soon as possible.