Cook County Jail is a ticking time bomb for detainees during this pandemic

In recent weeks, Chicago has exemplified to the world why it’s been dubbed the City of Big Shoulders — instituting a number of strategic and comprehensive efforts to protect wealthy and poor residents alike against the coronavirus pandemic.

Efforts here stretch throughout and beyond the city’s borders. Schools are offering free meals for pick-up during mandated school closures, with teachers doing yeoman’s work transitioning to online learning. Internet providers have given 60 free days of internet service to low-income households, and a baby-sitting partnership to help first responders find reliable childcare was announced in recent days.

Despite these steps, a major obstacle stands in the way of the Chicago area’s public health and safety, one that goes against the ideals of equity and social justice that my father devoted his life to.

That obstacle is the ticking time bomb that is Cook County Jail.

The sprawling complex, which sits on 96 acres and eight city blocks, is one of the largest single-site jails in the country, caging about 5,500 people each day. Tens of thousands of people circulate through the jail annually — all who have the possibility of contracting and serving as vectors of the novel coronavirus.

Already, COVID-19 has begun spreading within the jail’s walls. The Cook County Sheriff’s Office has confirmed that 17 people who are incarcerated and four guards have tested positive for the disease.

Late last week, Cook County Public Defender Amy Campanelli, filed an emergency petition requesting approval of a plan to release huge swaths of the jail population, including people held solely because they cannot afford to pay their bail. Yet, that request was denied by Judge LeRoy Martin, Jr., who instead issued an order for release requests to be individually reviewed.

There is no luxury of time here. As of Thursday afternoon, more than 2,500 Illinois residents have tested positive for coronavirus and 26 have died, numbers that are only climbing.

It is in this spirit of urgency that Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights has pledged $60,000 to the Chicago Community Bond Fund to help conduct an immediate series of bailouts at the Cook County Jail before the inevitable further spread of COVID-19 inside. Its contribution brings the fund’s total for the bailout effort to $120,000, at the same time the public health crisis is intensifying. The aim: to save lives and demonstrate the absurdity and inhumanity of detaining people pretrial because they cannot afford to buy their way out.

Yet, it must be made clear there is no amount of philanthropic efforts that can stop this crisis. By continuing to detain people simply because they do not have financial resources, Cook County is forcing its most marginalized residents to choose between a roof over their heads and food on the table with getting a loved one out of jail. We should also remember there are many more people incarcerated for minor probation violations or serving short sentences for misdemeanors. The county should release those people immediately.

“The people who are detained in the Cook County Jail and the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center are not exempt from this impact either, and we must do what we can to protect this vulnerable population just like we have united to protect our elders and those with preexisting conditions,” County Board President Toni Preckwinkle said in a recent statement.

We urge State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, Chief Judge Timothy Evans and others to heed those words for the sake of public health and human decency.

“Our bail system inflicts hardship on defendants and it inflicts considerable financial costs on society,” my father said as he fought for national bail reform in 1964. “Such cruelty and costs should not be tolerated in any event, but when they are needless, then we must ask ourselves why we have not developed a remedy long ago.”

As a human rights organization, we’ve fought long and hard against needless pretrial detention, recognizing the blatant injustice of a system that penalizes you before your day in court. These issues are only magnified in the face of a global pandemic that endangers the lives of those who cannot afford to pay for their freedom.

“Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive,” poet Carl Sandburg wrote in Chicago, the same poem where the Big Shoulders nickname first appeared.

The Chicago area must take those words to heart today and embody the grace and grit it’s known for.

Kerry Kennedy is president of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, a nonprofit advocacy organization.

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