the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Sep 13, 2021
As many as 4,000 people around the country may have to deliver themselves to prison soon to do time. They are federal prisoners convicted of nonviolent offenses such as possession of marijuana, who were sent home last April as the pandemic exploded.
They were kept on home detention, wearing ankle monitors and checking in daily by phone—essentially, quarantined at home to take pressure off the prisons temporarily.
Now federal policy claims the pandemic emergency is over. Thousands of people will have to report back behind concrete and iron.
It’s sick. They pose almost no threat to the community. Of 23,000 people transferred to home detention during the pandemic, only 21 were taken back into prison because of allegedly committing new violations. That’s less than one per thousand.
But the federal government seems determined to drag them back into the Covid-infested hell that is the American prison system.