Addressing COVID-19: A Call to Prioritize Human Well-being

In response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, governments at all levels have emphasized the importance of prioritizing health. However, concerns arise regarding the inadequacy of health protocols for incarcerated individuals. This letter highlights the pressing need to enhance health protection measures within correctional facilities, emphasizing the well-being of those behind bars. Given the unique challenges posed by the environment within jails, prisons, immigration detention centers, juvenile detention facilities, and courthouses, it is imperative to adopt an approach that places priority on the needs of individuals affected by criminalization and social inequality.

Immediate Measures to Reduce Incarceration:

  • Release Young Individuals to Family and Community Care: Advocating for the immediate release of all young individuals into the care of their families and communities.
  • Protecting Vulnerable Inmates: Recommending the release of individuals at high risk of contracting COVID-19, including those over 50, pregnant, or immunocompromised.
  • Expanding Temporary Absence Programs: Extending the temporary absence program and releasing individuals in pretrial detention who are legally innocent and not an immediate danger to the community.
  • Releasing Immigrants and Refugees: Calling for the release of all immigrants and refugees from jails and immigration detention centers, with a suspension of immigration enforcement operations, especially near shelters, hospitals, or medical clinics.
  • Suspending Non-Violent Charges: Temporarily suspending arrests, prosecutions, and pretrial detention for all non-violent charges and allocating resources for community-based transformative justice responses.
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Immediate Measures to Protect the Incarcerated:

  • Providing Essential Supplies: Ensuring that all prisoners receive soap, hand sanitizer, bleach, and cleaning supplies at no cost, along with detainees being held in locations where they do not share toilets, soap, utensils, or bedding.
  • Limiting Solitary Confinement: Advising against the reliance on solitary confinement for health and safety and advocating for increased access to fresh air spaces with safe social distancing for detainees.
  • Facilitating Communication: In the absence of visitations, advocate for all phone calls and other forms of contact to be free while calling for the immediate lifting of restrictions on calls to cell phones and switchboards.
  • Enhancing Medical Support: Emphasizing the importance of full funding, ensuring accessibility and staffing of medical programs within correctional facilities. This includes providing training, protective gear, and regular testing for incarcerated individuals and staff, as well as ensuring the availability of medications and treatments.

Immediate Measures for Vulnerable Communities:

  • Collaborating with Indigenous Leaders: Encouraging effective collaboration with Indigenous leaders to develop a comprehensive pandemic prevention and response plan that addresses the elevated risks faced by Indigenous communities both on and off reserves.
  • Ensuring Accessible Testing and Treatment: Advocating for free and readily available COVID-19 testing and treatment for all.
  • Supporting Workers: Calling for the legislation of two weeks of paid sick days for all workers and providing emergency financial support for unemployed individuals and those without immigration status.
  • Halting Evictions and Foreclosures: Urging an immediate moratorium on eviction and foreclosure proceedings.
  • Addressing Public Transit and Utilities: Recommending the immediate end to fare enforcement on public transit and the imposition of a moratorium on all utility shut-offs, with the restoration of services.
  • Focusing on Drug Use and Harm Reduction: Highlighting the importance of ensuring the availability of medications and treatments, including opioid substitution, and ceasing the criminalization of drug use while funding harm reduction and supervised consumption programs.

Immediate Measures for the Unhoused Population:

  • Providing Safe Spaces for Quarantine: Advocating for designated spaces for unhoused individuals to self-quarantine in individualized settings.
  • Enhancing Shelter Support: Recommending the establishment of 24-hour emergency shelters with access to soap, hand sanitizer, water, showers, restrooms, and three daily meals.
  • This letter urges local, provincial, and federal officials to make these protocols public and to take immediate action for the well-being of the entire community.

Signed by Organizations and Individuals

This letter was collectively endorsed by a total of 66 organizations and 1044 individuals dedicated to advocating for the rights and well-being of incarcerated individuals and vulnerable communities.

A few of the endorsing organizations include:

  • Bar None Winnipeg
  • Black Legal Action Centre
  • Black Lives Matter – Toronto
  • Books to Prisoners Ottawa
  • Calling All Crows
  • Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies
  • Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network
  • Canadian Prison Law Association
  • Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy Ryerson
  • Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy UofT