April 3, 2020
The (Champaign) News-Gazette
State officials need to be extremely careful in selecting prisoners for early release
The coronavirus pandemic is changing life on the outside and the inside - the outside world where the vast majority of people live and inside Illinois’ prisons.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker has established draconian rules requiring nonessential workers to stay home.
At the same time, as a means of limiting the spread of the coronavirus, he’s ordering what are described as low-level inmates approaching the end of their sentences to be released back into society.
These inmates presumably will exchange their incarceration in a state prison for their semi-incarceration wherever they find their new homes.
Assuming the public-health problem is as bad as Pritzker asserts that it is in the state’s prisons, his decision makes some sense.
As governor, he possesses the power to commute the sentences of inmates and allow them to go free regardless of their original sentence.
Pritzker said earlier this week that the Department of Corrections has released an additional 300 inmates.
The department said that, as of Thursday, there 52 confirmed cases of coronavirus in its prisons, 48 of which are at Stateville. The other four are in North Lawndale.
There were about 38,000 male and female inmates being held in Illinois prisons as of Dec. 31.
So the outbreak, so far at least, is minimal, although it could spread, particularly at Stateville.
That’s why the corrections department has reported that “facilities with confirmed cases of COVID-19 are placed on lockdown, which means there is no movement around the facility except for medical care.”
Circumstances were further complicated when civil-rights lawyers filed a lawsuit demanding the release of prisoners considered to be the “most vulnerable” to the coronavirus, no matter what crimes they were convicted of or sentences they are serving.
Ten inmates, including one serving time for murder, were named as plaintiffs in the class-action federal lawsuit.
The lawsuit states that “the state must take urgent steps to release, furlough or transfer to home detention all that qualify under the law, and particularly those who are elderly and medically vulnerable.”
It also asserts that “class members who are elderly and medically vulnerable, and those with pathways to release, must be released now.”
The lawsuit poses an interesting question: Do prison inmates have a legal right to premature release in the event of a pandemic?
Under the current circumstances, it’s difficult to second-guess Pritzker’s decision to oversee some early releases.
However, it’s important to point out that the reason people are sentenced to prison, even so-called low-level offenders, is because they have refused to abide, many repeatedly, by the law.
So Pritzker is taking a risk with public safety in the interests of public health.
As for the notion that he’s required by law to release all those inmates whose lawyers insist they should be released, that is an entirely different and more much serious issue.
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April 2, 2020
Chicago Tribune
Dear Public Officials: When possible, trust us with more information on coronavirus cases
The growing number of coronavirus-linked deaths in the Chicago area shakes us to the core. Two local victims have raised particular anxiety: a baby and a police officer.
The March 23 death of a 9-month-old Chicago infant challenged one of the few areas of solace with this virus, that young children somehow had significant protection from it.
Then on Thursday, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced the first death of a Chicago police officer, who had been diagnosed with the virus days earlier.
The daily briefings from elected officials provide, in broad strokes, the progression of the virus and the efforts to combat it. This information is greatly appreciated. And yet, there are few details other than numbers being released. The public should be trusted with as much information as possible. After all, the first line of defense against virus spread is the decision-making by all of us to protect ourselves and those around us.
We understand the need and the legal concerns to protect patient privacy. We also recognize tracking chains of transmission is difficult. Still. Is there more information that could be shared without violating individual privacy?
For example, the Cook County Department of Public Health recently released maps that pinpointed cases cropping up on a town-by-town basis. The information is instructive for residents in towns that appear to have hot spots. Perhaps the explanations are benign - more testing, for example, in some of those communities.
What we also learned: Nearly three-quarters of confirmed coronavirus cases in the suburbs of Cook County had no known origin. That’s an important piece of information. If your town is seeing an uptick in cases, maybe have those groceries delivered.
When Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced the death of the infant, he encouraged the public to grieve.
The Tribune’s Annie Sweeney reports that the Cook County medical examiner’s office is conducting additional testing on the baby, which could be completed soon. Maybe an underlying medical condition contributed to the infant’s death. At this writing, though, the public doesn’t know, and that leaves people more anxious about the possible implications for children.
We grieve for the family of Marco DiFranco. He worked as a narcotics officer and had less contact with the public than a beat cop. Officials aren’t sure when or how he came into contact with an infected person. He leaves behind a wife and two children.
For people of a certain age, the daily counts of U.S. lives lost are disturbingly familiar. We experienced it in the era of Vietnam, when newspapers and TV news reported the rise in casualties of U.S. soldiers.
If the grim predictions for coronavirus come true, the U.S. will lose two, three, perhaps many more times the 58,000 American lives lost in Vietnam - and in just a matter of months, not years. From the individual tragedies to the broader evidence of virus progression, this is a great deal to process. It is staggering.
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April 2, 2020
(Arlington Heights) Daily Herald
Governor, when it comes to Fair Maps, democracy needs you
Given the other things on our minds, it is hard for any of us to turn our attention these days to Illinois’ sorry practice of gerrymandering, and it feels particularly unfair to expect Gov. J.B Pritzker to place any of his attention on it.
Pritzker, even his critics would acknowledge, pursued an activist and ambitious agenda in his first year in office.
It was, it turns out, unfortunately just a precursor to the work ahead of him.
In recent weeks, Pritzker has grappled with the greatest challenge not just of his governorship, but of his lifetime. It is a challenge that will continue to occupy him for many days, weeks and months ahead: keeping the people of Illinois safe from the deadly pandemic that has spread around the globe.
It will be months, perhaps even years, before Pritzker’s performance on this awesome challenge can be thoroughly assessed.
The most pointed assessment, of both Pritzker’s response and that of all of us, will come daily in the fearful rolling COVID-19 numbers, and how well we in Illinois are able to restrain the tragedy and heartache in them.
The governor, we must say in our initial assessment, seems to be giving it his all, and we appreciate his vital leadership.
How can we ask him, in such a time, to sprinkle some of that leadership too on redistricting reform, on the Fair Maps initiative being promoted by CHANGE Illinois?
We ask because we, and the people of Illinois, have no option but to ask.
We have no luxury to say, put the remap reform on the back burner and get to it when less pressing matters compete for time and attention.
Reality is, if gerrymandering is to end in Illinois, Gov. Pritzker is one of the few people with the power and influence to make it happen.
And reality is, if it’s going to happen, it has to happen now, in the next month.
If the General Assembly hasn’t agreed by May 3 to put a referendum on the November ballot asking for a Constitutional amendment to take district mapping out of the hands of the politicians, well, it won’t happen.
At least not in time to stop legislative and Congressional maps from being tailored for party interests throughout the 2020s.
Maybe by 2030, we as a state could get around to it, but that would mean one more decade of cynical party control of elections that are supposed to be decided by the people.
We believe Pritzker is a good man who wants to leave a legacy of good works completed under his stewardship. Certainly, protecting the people from COVID-19 is a vital one of those good works.
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