PDF Examining Prison Releases in Response to COVID: Lessons Learned for Reducing the Effects of Mass Incarceration
In response to the global pandemic in 2020, states and the federal government began to
make non-routine releases from prison in order to reduce prison populations to allow for
social distancing in prison facilities. This report is aimed at describing where such prison
releases occurred, the legal mechanisms used to achieve these releases, and the factors within
jurisdictions that made non-routine prison releases more or less likely to occur. We write this
report, not to examine the national response to the pandemic, but to better understand when
and how extraordinary measures may be used to effect prison release, and to determine
whether there are lessons from this experience that can be applied to reducing the effects of
mass incarceration.