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View this post in Drupal 7Document Date: September 24, 2021
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve advocated, lobbied, filed amicus briefs, written in the newspapers, appeared on tv, marched, rallied, and spoke out to stop the spread of COVID-19 in our jails and prisons. We warned that a COVID19 outbreak in Hawaii’s prisons and jails would spread like a vicious wildfire. And it has.
As of September 2021, over 2,800 people incarcerated in DPS facilities and more than 350 correctional staff have contracted COVID-19 since the pandemic began, including nine deaths in that group.
District Court Judge Jill Otake recently ruled DPS failed to follow its own Pandemic Response Plan and declared that Hawai‘i prisons and jails responded so poorly to the spread of COVID-19 that corrections officials demonstrated “deliberate indifference” to the threat the disease posed to people inside. DPS:
People in jail and prison have a constitutional right to a healthy and safe environment.
DPS has plainly violated—and continues to violate—pretrial detainees’ and postconviction prisoners’ rights to due process and to be free from cruel and unusual punishment. To be clear that no one, regardless of what crime they are accused or have been convicted of, should be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment—a stronger presumption of release should be used for three groups of incarcerated people:
Populations should be reduced in DPS facilities so that they comply with the “infectious disease emergency capacities” established by the Oversight Commission which, by law, are mandatory.
In 2020, we saw prosecutors and legislators fear mongering about the threat to public safety that releases might cause. But we know from the Lawyers for Equal Justice report, Outbreak, that of those who were released and re-arrested, the majority (roughly 90%) were charged with offenses relating directly to homelessness and poverty, not because of violent activity.
Officials must reduce the number of people in prisons and jails by not incarcerating anyone for low-level charges, releasing those who are bail-eligible, and releasing those who are disabled and otherwise medically vulnerable to the virus.
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First released in April 2020
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