The Washington Post: Trump and governors can slow the spread of covid-19 in prisons and jails
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Harris, a former general counsel to the Kentucky Republican Party, was a guest on my podcast “Cape Up” in 2018 talking about the need for criminal justice reform from the political right. She returned to the podcast last week to implore Trump to issue an executive order to release elderly nonviolent prisoners from federal custody in light of the coronavirus. After all, Trump said, “We are actually looking at that, yes,” in response to a question at a coronavirus briefing-turned-campaign rally at the White House on March 22.
“We’ve asked the president to expedite, facilitate the transfer of elderly prisoners, people with preexisting conditions who are more susceptible to transmission of the virus and to spreading the virus and certainly those who have been incarcerated for low-level, nonviolent offenses who have very little time left on their sentences, to transfer these individuals to home confinement,” Harris told me. “We’re not just saying, ‘Open the doors. Open the floodgates.’ We’re saying, ‘Transfer these individuals to home confinement.’ Many of them already have families waiting on them, ready to care for them. Why are we keeping them incarcerated when they’re more susceptible to the disease?”