Finding

Inconsistency and wide variation among criminal justice agencies impeded responses to the pandemic.

As the Commission observed in its interim report, “[C]riminal justice policymakers and practitioners instituted a patchwork of policies nationwide [in response to COVID-19] … This lack of consistency created confusion and inequities in responding to a pandemic that spans organizational and jurisdictional boundaries.” Inconsistent policies produced inconsistent outcomes, with several state correctional systems experiencing rates of infection and mortality many times higher than their state average. Some diversity in response strategies across states and jurisdictions was inevitable given the decentralized nature of the U.S. criminal justice system. But while variation often provides valuable opportunities for policy experimentation, innovation, and adaptation, effective control of a public health crisis on the scale of COVID-19 depends upon consistent adherence to evidence-based disease-control strategies. Research on the novel coronavirus and COVID-19 treatment is still evolving, but valuable guidance exists for criminal justice leaders. The CDC has issued important public health guidance and, at the request of the Commission, the centers for Health Security and Public Health and Human Rights at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health recently issued a report entitled “COVID-19 and the US Criminal Justice System: Evidence for Public Health Measures to Reduce Risk.” The Commission has produced or released additional reports with strategic advice, including its recent interim recommendations. A recent systematic review identifies nine major themes for managing previous infection disease outbreaks in correctional settings: multi-agency collaboration, health communication, screening for contagious diseases, isolation and quarantine, contact tracing, immunization programs, surveillance, prison-specific guidelines, and population restriction.

“Federal agencies have a role to play in state and local criminal justice. They can offer information, training, support, and more. Perhaps most importantly, they can bring people together across jurisdictions and boundaries.”

Sheriff Ed Gonzalez

While the practice of criminal justice remains mostly a state and local enterprise, the federal government plays a role that goes well beyond the enforcement of federal law. The federal government, and state and local governments to a lesser extent, can and should exercise stronger leadership through strategic use of their information-sharing, training, technical assistance, grant-making, and convening powers. The federal government can also enact and enforce legislation, but this power has significant political and constitutional limitations. A broader federal role in state and local criminal justice has been encouraged since at least 1967, when President Lyndon Johnson’s President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice called for federal support for criminal justice research, statistics, and innovation at the state and local level. That led to the creation of the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, the predecessor agency to the Office of Justice Programs at the U.S. Department of Justice. During public health crises like the coronavirus pandemic, the federal government should marshal its powers to help shape stronger, more consistent responses by criminal justice agencies and community-based organizations. States and localities should continue to serve as laboratories of innovation, adapting lessons learned from other jurisdictions and offering new strategies of their own.