The Real Justice Lesson of the Pandemic

When the pandemic hit, the way we went about our everyday lives changed rapidly. Old systems had to adapt quickly to keep us safe, while new systems that we had previously thought impossible or impractical, like remote schooling, remote work, and telehealth, became essential to our livelihoods and well-being.

The same was true for the criminal legal system.

In a matter of weeks, this massive (and mostly broken) system had to make changes immediately after COVID-19 struck and jail and prison conditions became horrific — in many cases even deadly. Cases were piling up in courts, causing delayed trials. Our jails, prisons and courts had to move swiftly to react.

As the country marks the two-year anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic, there are a number of important lessons this public health emergency taught elected officials, policymakers and criminal justice leaders working to reform the system.

These lessons should resonate across the country.  The entire system will be safer if they do.

Even under normal circumstances, the confinement, indignities and unpleasantness of jails and prison are barely tolerable at best, and deadly at worst. In a pandemic, it is far worse.

Those incarcerated were terrified of catching a potentially fatal disease, and were taunted with the sounds of non-stop coughing and wheezing down the corridor. There were no family visits, and day after day was spent in solitary. There was also the deep-seated unease that the unvaccinated prison guard a few feet away may have spent the weekend with crowds indoors at bars and family get-togethers.

Early in the pandemic, the Cook County Jail earned a reputation as a “petri dish” for COVID-19. Infection numbers were extremely high for staff and those held inside the jail. Efforts to isolate, vaccinate, and decrease the number of people brought into the jail did improve conditions, but numbers went back up driven by the Omicron variant and new people entering the jail.

In retrospect, elected officials and policymakers should have acted much faster to lower jail populations. Ultimately, Cook County was able to lower its jail population by 25 percent in the middle of a pandemic without compromising public safety.

The deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor increased attention on systemic racism within the entire criminal legal system at about the same time that COVID-19 was spreading in our jails.

The combination helped convince Illinois legislators to pass, and Gov. JB Pritzker to sign, a sweeping reform law to eliminate cash bond, effective next January. For the first time in Illinois, people accused of crimes will not have to sit in jail cells awaiting trial simply because they can’t come up with the cash to buy their freedom.

This long-overdue change happened because of public pressure, showing that it is essential to build public awareness of systemic problems within the criminal legal system. Organizers, advocates, and voters were able to come together in the wake of a tragedy and take clear steps to push for reforms.

Jails and prisons weren’t the only institutions impacted by COVID-19. So too were courtrooms like those in Cook County.

With delayed trials causing a traffic jam of cases awaiting trial, a new collaborative approach was developed to address youth’s needs in the Cook County Juvenile Deferred Prosecution program. This brings together the courts, probation, prosecutors, public defenders and service providers, and has already served more than 250 youth who were arrested but not taken to trial due to court closures at the beginning of the pandemic.

These youth are assessed and provided appropriate services that result in a dismissal of their case upon completion. Only a handful of youth in the program have come back in contact with the legal system.

This experience reinforced what we already knew: most arrested youth need help, not a deeper involvement with the justice system.

Garien Gatewood

Prison and jail populations can increase as quickly as they dropped during the height of the pandemic.

There are signs that change is beginning to happen across the country.

Just as the world must remain steadfast in battling the pandemic, so must reform advocates make use of these lessons and continue to seize every opportunity to keep as many people as safely as possible away from terrible, dehumanizing conditions.

Garien Gatewood is director of the Illinois Justice Project