Chief justice pleads for Kentucky inmate releases ahead of COVID-19, but progress slow
Kentucky’s chief justice is urging state court officials to release jail inmates “as quickly as we can” to avoid potentially calamitous outbreaks of the novel coronavirus behind bars. However, new jail population figures suggest that most officials have been slow to address the crisis, and dozens of local jails remain crammed with far more bodies than beds.
“Kentucky’s overcrowded jails desperately need our attention,” Supreme Court Chief Justice John Minton Jr. said in a message sent Friday to the state’s judges and court clerks. “Much like nursing homes, jails are susceptible to worse-case scenarios due to the close proximity of people and the number of pre-existing conditions.”
Pre-trial defendants who safely can await the outcome of their case at home should do so, Minton said.
In ordinary times, thousands of Kentuckians sit in jail until their criminal cases are concluded because they cannot afford to pay their bond. Delays will be even worse for a while because state courts have postponed trials and most hearings for a month due to the coronavirus, to avoid having crowds in courthouses.
“We know what a potential disaster this could be, and it’s our responsibility to work with jailers and other county officials to safely release as many defendants as we can as quickly as we can,” Minton said.
Some court officials have been releasing people from jail to get ahead of the virus, with judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys reviewing inmate lists to decide whom they believe safely can be released.
But statewide jail population figures dropped by only 6.2 percent over the last two weeks, from 24,047 inmates on March 5 to 22,556 inmates on March 19, suggesting the reduction effort had yet to make much of a dent.
A few jails showed dramatic reductions, such as the 602-bed Kenton County Detention Center in Covington, which shed 100 of its 716 inmates over that two-week period. “With a few exceptions, anybody nonviolent who didn’t offend against a child stands a very good chance of being released,” Kenton Commonwealth’s Attorney Rob Sanders told the Herald-Leader last week.
The inmate count at the Jefferson County Detention Center in Louisville dropped by 188, but there were still 1,685 people incarcerated in that large facility. Fayette County’s jail dropped from 1,188 to 1,174 and Madison County’s chronically overcrowded jail fell from 343 to 336, despite ongoing efforts by court officials in both counties to send inmates home.
Civil rights groups are joining the chief justice in calling for more aggressive inmate releases.
“We saw what happened when people were locked up during (Hurricane) Katrina. They died,” said Sonja DeVries, a member of the group Louisville Showing Up For Racial Justice, which staged a socially distanced protest Friday outside the Jefferson County courthouse. “It is outrageous that we put inmates and workers in this kind of danger during COVID-19.”
As of March 19, 32 of the state’s roughly 80 local jails were at or above 125 percent of their capacity — an improvement from last week’s 40 jails, but still showing clear signs of inmate overcrowding across the state.
This story was originally published March 23, 2020 at 3:52 PM.
