12/11/2023 0 Comments Washington lockdown![]() Study after study has shown that people age out of crime. Is it safe to release incarcerated people who have been convicted of sometimes violent offenses? Because of the way race and class intersect in this country, we are also talking about a (prison and jail) population that is disproportionately black, brown and Indigenous. If we were to look at jails alone throughout the year, we would see about 10 million people coming in and out mostly because they can’t afford to not be in jail. Those in jail mostly haven’t been convicted of anything but are there because they can’t afford to pay bail. On any given day, a combined 2.3 million people are incarcerated in this country. Why have you and other activists argued that refusing to release incarcerated people is essentially sentencing them to death for being poor? It is an exceedingly narrow group that the resolution itself acknowledges is not responding to those most at risk. But it only provides relief to people convicted of non-violent drug and alcohol offenses and those who have release dates of June 30 or earlier-people who should not have been in prison to begin with. The governor’s resolution explicitly identifies “elderly people and those with underlying conditions” as particularly vulnerable. The decision came in response to a Washington State Supreme Court ruling requiring the governor to take “all necessary steps” to prevent the spread of Covid-19 among incarcerated people. In April, Inslee announced plans to release some 950 incarcerated people convicted of non-violent offenses from state prisons. Incarceration also creates or worsens a variety of health conditions that put people of all age groups at risk. About 38% of the state’s prison population is in a high-risk group for developing serious complications from the virus just by virtue of their age and sentence length. Washington also abolished parole in the late 1980s, creating a bottleneck that keeps people in prison for much longer than they were 30 years ago. The prison population has gotten older over last three decades of mass incarceration as sentences have grown longer. The state of Washington, like every other state, should be moving to let as many people out of prison as quickly as possible. When you add a communicable disease to this equation, you have the potential to exacerbate a major public health problem. These are already people that tend not to have health insurance or ready access to medical care. At jails and detention centers, there’s a constant churn of people-the vast majority of whom come from communities that are already underserved by society. In some facilities, there are dorms instead of cells, with people sleeping next to each other on cots. You have cramped quarters with, in many cases, two to three people in a cell. The physical conditions themselves are conducive to the spread of illness. You have written that “prisons are a blight upon public health.” Why should prisons be at the forefront of the response to the virus? The virus also reveals in the starkest terms, Berger says, the injustice of America’s system of mass incarceration. Crowded and unsanitary conditions could lead to large numbers of inmate deaths and pose a high risk of spreading the virus beyond prison walls. We will update this story as more details become available.The health and safety of both incarcerated people and the broader community required quick action, they argued. Harrison Police Chief Dave Strumolo and Superintendent of Schools James Doran did not return phone messages seeking comments about the incident. Police say “swatting is the action or practice of making a prank call to emergency services in an attempt to bring about the dispatch of a large number of armed police officers and emergency personnel to a particular address.” “The Harrison Police Department is actively investigating this incident.” “Thank you to the surrounding agencies for their prompt response and assistance during this incident,” Harrison PD said. Out of an abundance of caution, all schools in town were placed on immediate lockdown at that time and police were sent to all schools to help keep order. Harrison police immediately responded to Washington MS and the entire building was quickly searched - there was never an active shooter at the school at any time - and no students, teachers or staffers were ever in any imminent danger, the police said. The heavy police presence around Harrison’s Washington Middle School May 10 - and other schools in town thereafter - was caused by a SWATTING incident this morning when an unknown male called the Harrison Police Department to falsely claim there was an active shooter at the middle school, the Harrison PD said in a news release.Īccording to Harrison PD, the call was made at 11:36 a.m.
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