ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic illustrates the human toll that prisons exact, but in hyperdrive. By their nature, prisons cannot provide the best method to mitigate risk of contagion: social distancing. As a result, prisons across the globe have become hotspots for the virus. Swift release is the only sound measure to reduce deaths and the spread of the disease inside and outside prison, but the official response has been haphazard and sluggish; a mere 5% of the world’s total incarcerated population is estimated to have been released. Worse, many governments have chosen to double down on punishment by resorting to prolonged lockdowns. For human rights advocates, the pandemic prompts a broader reckoning with incarceration. Human rights law prescribes procedural protections for defendants and minimum conditions of confinement for detainees yet remains largely silent on the most fundamental question: what justifies taking a person’s freedom? In that vacuum, systems of punishment have flourished, producing a cascade of human suffering and systemic oppression. The pandemic has made that rights gap visible and intolerable. Human rights must treat incarceration for what it is: a nineteenth-century technology that is incompatible with human dignity and equality.
