Cook County Officials Bear Most Direct Duty of Care to Those in Custody during COVID-19 Pandemic
By Sarah Staudt, Senior Policy Analyst & Staff Attorney for the Collaboration for Justice of Chicago Council of Lawyers and Chicago Appleseed
Cook County Jail must immediately, and drastically, reduce its jail population.
Over two weeks ago, Chicago Appleseed organized the first e-meeting to coordinate criminal justice advocates around the response to COVID-19 in our jails and prisons. Since then, we have worked with many partners in a flurry of activity, urging all stakeholders to work quickly and decisively to release as many people as possible from the jail to avoid a massive public health emergency.
Jails and prisons present a perfect storm of conditions for the transmission of COVID-19. They are dirty, and residents rarely have opportunities to wash their hands throughout the day. Much of the programming and activity within jails is communal; incarcerated people eat together in large mess halls, gather together for recreation in crowded day rooms and yards, and often sleep in open dormitory settings. The social distancing that the CDC has been recommending for weeks is simply impossible in this context. Jail staff move in and out of units, are regularly in physical contact with many incarcerated people a day, and then leave at the end of their shift to return to their communities, bringing the virus with them if they become infected.
Generally, Cook County’s and the State of Illinois’ public health responses to similar hot spots have been to eliminate them. Universities and schools have closed their doors; we have disallowed large gatherings and encouraged everyone to avoid being in close proximity to anyone outside their households. And yet, weeks after our advocacy commenced in earnest, our elected and appointed officials have failed to make substantial progress in extending these measures to the jail.
There are now—as of March 29—101 detained people who have tested positive to COVID-19 in Cook County Jail, along with 12 corrections staff. On March 23, less than a week prior, there were only two detainees and one staff person positive. The number of cases is growing rapidly, more than doubling every day.
Our call as advocates has been the same since day one: release every person who does not pose an imminent threat of violence from the jail. With our advocacy partners, we did the work of identifying, for public officials, categories of people to target for release. And yet, two weeks later, no official can even publicly say exactly how many people have been released; only that it is almost certainly less than 100 people.
This is a colossal failure in the administration of justice from our judges, State’s Attorney, Sheriff, Public Defender, and county as a whole. Since Cook County Officials have chosen not to act in an appropriate and timely matter to mitigate the risk of COVID-19 in the jail, we must now focus on saving lives. That means an immediate, mass release of as many people as possible from the jail, so they can follow public health guidelines and join the rest of the state in sheltering in place.
At a press conference on Friday, Sheriff Dart tried to make excuses for the embarrassingly low numbers of releases, falsely claiming that the vast majority of people currently in the jail are “violent offenders.” This is simply not true. Our analysis of the jail population on March 20 shows that, in fact, 40% of people in Cook County Jail are charged with non-violent crimes. Still more have been deemed safe to release by judges, but are forced to remain in jail because they lack the funds to pay money bond amounts; many are on probation for forcible felonies, but are only in jail currently because of a technical violation (such as a missed appointment or testing positive for cannabis). There are thousands of individuals continuing to suffer in the Cook County Jail who do not pose an imminent threat to public safety.
Across the country, governments are realizing that they need to take drastic action. In New Jersey, officials have worked together to quickly release 1,000 people with a single court order. Meanwhile, Cook County insists on individual release hearings for thousands of people—even those charged with crimes that every public official agrees do not warrant jail time. There are around 60 people in the jail for driving on suspended licenses, and another 97 who are there for retail theft. There is simply no excuse for the glacial pace these hearings are taking.
COVID-19 created an unprecedented threat, and a new kind of emergency, for all of us. But our elected officials cannot forget about the people to whom they bear the most direct duty of care: those who are incarcerated in our jails and prisons. Because of the failure of Cook County government, the widespread suffering and loss of life in the jail is inevitable. The only foreseeable way, now, to save lives is for the courts and county government to take immediate action—much more aggressively than they have done with the small steps taken to date.
Chicago Community Bond Fund is encouraging all residents of Cook County to call or email the Offices of the Cook County Chief Judge and Sheriff in support of our collective demands that leadership protect people in their custody during this crisis. More information on how you can help: https://chicagobond.org/2020/03/16/call-in-to-protect-public-health-through-decaration/