The coronavirus (COVID-19) is stopping executions around the country and potentially creating another sort of systematic death. Since the entire criminal justice system is affected, every aspect of it is seeing new roadblocks as the country tries to adjust. With this, a new danger has emerged.
Even though states are experiencing delays in their plans to kill people that are imprisoned, they’re still ready to take the lives of people in these facilities in more ways than one. Prisons have become increasingly dangerous for inmates who aren’t even on death row.
A person could be in prison for a nonviolent or petty offense that’s not subject to capital punishment, and yet they still run the extremely high risk of being killed by COVID-19 in prison or jail, since these places are cesspools for the disease. Authorities are trying to justify this in very heinous ways.
People assume that if someone is in prison, they deserve whatever they get, but that’s not true. The death penalty is outdated and racist, and Black people know better than most that we don’t even have to do anything to end up behind bars. And people inside right now are struggling to survive.
We have a choice.
We can continue to follow the line and think that people in prison are worthless and let these places be incubators to spread the disease, or we can demand what’s right. People in prisons need to be released before they’re executed by neglect!