Instead of building new jails, we must focus our efforts on reshaping a post-pandemic society free of the challenges that led to an Indigenous man’s recent death.
Segregation cells at Dorchester prison in New Brunswick.
(Senate of Canada)
In a system that treats people as objects to be counted, chained, searched and assigned a number, art is a way for prisoners to reassert their agency – and reclaim their lives.
As we emerge from the pandemic, we need to rebuild our justice system to invest more in First Nations communities, not prisons. It is vital we not return to the status quo.
Inmates work in the laundry room at Las Colinas Women’s Detention Facility in Santee, California, on April 22, 2020.
Sandy Huffaker/AFP via Getty Images
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, missteps in transitioning the incarcerated back to their communities places this already vulnerable populace at greater risk of getting and transmitting the virus.
The design called for plants and play spaces – big improvements over brick and razor wire.
Iowa State University student design team
About half of incarcerated women in the United States are mothers to children under age 18. Natural spaces within a prison can help maintain their mother-child bonds.
In this March 2011 photo, a security fence surrounds inmate housing on the Rikers Island correctional facility in New York.
(AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews,)
Prison lawyers in Canada are scrambling to fill the gap left by federal inaction on inmate populations who are vulnerable to COVID-19. A recent case in Ontario could provide a legal precedent.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, right, introduces a hand sanitizer manufactured by the state of New York.
AP Photo/Marina Villeneuve
Incarcerated Americans have been tasked with washing hospital laundry, manufacturing protective equipment, disinfecting cleaning supplies and digging mass graves.
People wearing protective masks leave the Cook County jail complex in Chicago, Illinois.
Scott Olson/Getty Images
Half of incarcerated individuals have either a chronic medical or a mental health condition. But social distancing and rigorous hygiene are unattainable for many US jails and prisons.
Counting Americans is a complicated process.
Tada Images/Shutterstock.com
Rebecca Tippett, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The 2020 census will now count some groups differently than it has in the past. That could make a difference in the final count – affecting which states receive funding and congressional seats.
Prisons are already a hotbed of disease, and without action COVID-19 could have catastrophic consequences behind bars.
A tipi at a federal prison in Edmonton. Prison systems have legal options to decrease their prison populations, including ways to return Indigenous people in prison to their communities.
(The Office of the Correctional Investigator)
Rapidly decreasing the prison population by letting people out is a public health imperative as governments for solutions to slow down the spread of the COVID-19 virus.
Experiences overseas show that releasing prisoners held on less serious offences early in the pandemic is essential to protect those inside the jail and the wider community.
Incarcerated people are often denied access to treatment for opioid use disorder. This October 2016 file photo shows corrections officer opening the door to a cell in the segregation unit at the Fraser Valley Institution for Women in Abbotsford, B.C. during a media tour.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
Urgently needed treatment for opioid use disorder is often denied to incarcerated people, feeding the crisis in prisons and jails.
The annual report from Canada’s prison watchdog paints a bleak picture of a prison system where violence between and against prisoners is concerning.
(Shutterstock)
Education for those behind bars is gaining more attention. In these four articles, scholars take an up-close look at efforts to provide – and restrict – higher education in prison.