-Law enforcement agencies nationwide
have sought to slow the rate of coronavirus infections in jails
and prisons by releasing inmates and limiting new arrests.
Although New Orleans has released a few hundred people
from its city jail since the outbreak began,
inmates and staff are getting sick.
Earlier this month, New Orleans Parish Prison Reform Coalition
joined other local groups in a motorcade protest
to pressure the city to release more detainees
and stop new arrests for nonviolent offenses.
The organization's director Sade Dumas has been leading
the fight to connect public health to prison health.
-All of the experts have said that the best way
to ensure safety of the people in the jail is to decarcerate.
So we need to see more efforts
happening on a decarceration front.
We need more efforts happening from NOPD officers
to not unnecessarily bring people the jail
who don't pose a risk to public safety.
Right now, our jail is under consent decree,
and we've been under consent decree since 2013.
And some of the reasons for that consent decree
are improper sanitation and inadequate medical care.
So if you combine those two things
with an infectious disease,
we have to think of the hundreds of people we're putting at risk.
And we also have to think of the law enforcement officers
who return to our community every day,
who return to their families.
So this is the big thing where I say you cannot separate prison
health from public health.
Our leaders refuse to see the humanity
of the people in the jail.
They refuse to treat people in jail with dignity.
They refuse to see them as community members.
And that's really where the problem is.
When we understand and look in someone else's eyes
and see that that person is just as human as we are,
we can't act in a way that would risk their lives.
There's no way someone with a heart can do that.
-What is like to have a loved one incarcerated right now
during this pandemic?
-It's scary to have a loved one incarcerated
during this pandemic right now.
I'm directly impacted by incarceration.
I have a brother in prison.
And my ex-husband's formerly incarcerated.
One of the biggest things, you can't communicate
with them as much.
It puts officers at risk.
So they're not going to get them and take them out of their pods.
Just knowing that in a lot of parishes,
people who test positive are being sent to prison facilities,
so they're really just making this big old incubator
where it's a larger problem.
-What's the biggest thing that you hope changes
as a result of this pandemic?
-We should not return to business
as usual when this is done.
We need to redefine what a new normal is.
This old way doesn't work.
It has never worked.
And if we see that the rates of crime is not spiking up
after these people are released,
then we should redefine our normal.
And right now, we see that the crime rate is not spiking up.
-Will the pandemic force a new way of thinking
about incarceration in America?
-A lot of trauma is happening because of this pandemic.
I'm hoping that we can learn from it on every level
with how we deal with incarcerated persons,
with how we treat essential workers in a grocery store.
I'm hoping that this is a learning lesson for us
to recalibrate our minds
and think about what's really important,
who really holds the power in the community,
who keeps the community going,
and why should we care about prison health
even if we don't care about people in prison.
And I know that sounds really rough, but I think
if more people understand how it connected to them,
then maybe they would have a little more empathy
to the pleas of advocates.
I just hope that all of this is a lesson.
I don't think that we can go through this much pain
without learning from it.
-As of Monday, April 20th,
New Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office
reported 47 staff and 56 inmates had tested positive
for COVID-19 in its facilities, and one staff member had died.
The inmate population has been reduced from 1,071 on March
2nd to 804 on April 20th.
When reached for comment,
New Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office said in a statement,
"We are working with the District Attorney,
judges, and public defenders to reduce our inmate population.
We are taking the necessary steps to protect the public,
our staff, and our inmates from the spread of COVID-19."