The coronavirus pandemic should be the start, not the end, of criminal justice reform, a California lawmaker says

Luchy Nicholson/Reuters

• California lawmaker Sydney Kamlager told Business Insider that the state should release more elderly and vulnerable prisoners, amid reports that COVID-19 is being introduced to prisons and jails.
• The state is set to release just 3,500 prisoners out of a population of around 115,000.
• The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation told Business Insider its taking steps to protect the safety of incarcerated people, saying it will use prison labor to manufacture up to 10,000 masks a day.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The global outbreak of COVID-19 has many of us rethinking a lot of our priors — our reliance on physical office spaces in the digital age; on health systems that discourage the ill, and contagious, from taking time off to receive care; and on pre-pandemic modes of lockdown, in prisons and jails, that even in the best of times degrade the physical and mental well-being of those inside.

"This is an opportunity for us to reevaluate the systems that we have in place," California Assemblymember Sydney Kamlager told Business Insider.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

NOW WATCH: A law professor weighs in on how Trump could beat impeachment

See Also:

• Colorado Gov. Jared Polis is optimistic his state may be able to get back to work at the end of April despite experts' warnings about a coronavirus resurgence
• More US voters believe Trump is a better leader during the coronavirus outbreak than Joe Biden, according to a new poll
• Trump tells Sean Hannity the US has plenty of ventilators and cites Hannity's own show to back up that claim

from Feedburner https://ift.tt/2Vhz1CP