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Reader Comments: I Can't Breathe - Again; Trump Second Term Means Tyranny; Reader's Respond on Tara Reade; Open Churches?; Vietnam; Indonesia; Chile; Nuclear Testing, Nuclear Cold War - Again; Resources; Events:COVID and mass incarceration; June 20th

The coronavirus pandemic is leading to “an explosion in the use of solitary confinement in prisons, jails, and detention centers.” Punitive isolation under the pretext of public health is worsening the crisis of mass incarceration.

Unless instant action is taken to reduce jail populations, a terrible price will be paid.

...little attention is being paid to the millions of people in the most overcrowded conditions that are ripe for the spread of this contagious and deadly virus: the people behind bars in America’s jails, prisons, and immigration detention centers.

As communities across the world are confronting the serious toll of COVID-19..., we at Critical Resistance want to amplify the grave concerns facing the imprisoned population, which is one of the most vulnerable groups in this time.

While only 31% of Maryland residents are black, more than 70% of Maryland’s prison population is black, a percentage that is more than twice the national average. And about 80% of people serving 10 years or more in Maryland prisons are black.

No issue has proved more vexing to this nation than the issue of race, and yet no question is more pressing than how to overcome the politics of white supremacy...that threatens our ability ever to create a truly fair, just and inclusive democracy.

2019 has seen an outpouring of local and state efforts to stem the tide of mass incarceration, from bail reform and mass bailouts, to efforts to close jails and legislation to divert people from lengthy prison sentences.

The history of Rikers is a warning about putting the onus of reform on infrastructure rather than the systems that lead to incarceration. If new prisons are built to replace it, it won't be long before they too will be judged inhumane.

Officials at Danville Correctional Center had removed some 200 books from a prison library and banned for use in the education program “several classic books of African American history"