Cook County, home of Chicago, released hundreds of inmates from its jails during the coronavirus crisis. But good luck trying to find out who is back on the streets or what crimes they are accused of committing.
The prosecutors and public defenders, who handle the cases in special COVID-19 court hearings, keep a close hold on the information and refuse to share it with the public or other law enforcement agencies.
The Cook County Sheriff’s Office that runs the jail says it doesn’t know who was released because of the coronavirus.
Even the Chicago Police Department says it’s in the dark about inmates who have been released.
“The greatest fear people have is the fear of the unknown,” Kevin Graham, president of the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police, told The Washington Times. “We don’t know what is occurring, we don’t know why people are being released, we don’t know their offenses, and we don’t know if these people pose a danger to society.”
Like Cook, cities and counties across the country are opening jailhouse gates to release inmates awaiting trial for crimes. The goal is to reduce the population behind bars because of fears that a coronavirus would spread quickly in the confined spaces of jail, endangering inmates and staff who have high risk factors that make COVID-19 a killer.
Prison reform advocates and some public health officials support the releases, but public safety advocates warn that authorities do not give enough scrutiny to those who are set free.
HIV-positive rapist released
In Cincinnati, Dexter Ford might seem like an obvious candidate for release.
At age 64 and HIV-positive, he checks some of the key boxes for high-risk factors. The homeless man was arrested last month on charges of trespassing after he washed himself in the bathroom of a grocery store.
But a closer look at his criminal history reveals something darker. In 2007, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for raping an epileptic University of Cincinnati student who was walking along a road.
Camille Cooper, vice president of the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, which advocates for sexual assault victims, said Ford’s history makes his release deeply troubling.
“Being HIV-positive, homeless and having a record for a sexually violent offense makes this individual extremely high-risk in terms of the danger he poses to the public,” she said.
Ford was being held on a $1,000 bond for the trespassing charge. He could have made bail if he had put up $100 as collateral. He didn’t have the money, which was why he was sitting in jail while authorities worried about the coronavirus.
Hamilton County Municipal Court Judge Janaya Trotter Bratton told The Washington Times that she released Ford because she didn’t think he should suffer for a lack of $100.
“I don’t think the purpose of bond is to punish people for being poor, and he was in jail and only in jail because he was poor. If there was an individual with the same fact pattern and means to pay $100, we wouldn’t be on this call,” she said.
Judge Bratton said she doesn’t view Ford as a danger to the community.
“He’s 64 and has not been in any trouble at all since he’s gotten out of prison,” she said. “He was picked up on the least charge you can be picked up on.”
Ms. Cooper, the victims’ advocate, said it didn’t make sense to release Ford on his own rather than sending him to a halfway house or other restrictive environment.
“Just releasing him and saying you can go be transient again is an additional risk to him,” she said. “If the judge wants to come at it from a compassionate standpoint, she could have provided social support to this individual who has multiple risk factors. It is kind of an irresponsible thing to do to a multiple offender.”
Other releases drawing scrutiny nationwide include eight registered sex offenders who were released in suburban Buffalo, New York, under a statewide order to thin the population of a local prison. Three of the releases are deemed most likely to re-offend.
The police chief in Greece, New York, about 70 miles east of Buffalo, said he found out from a TV news reporter that three convicted child rapists had been released and were staying at a Holiday Inn Express in his town.
During the first week of releases from the Jefferson County Jail in Denver, seven people with multiple charges of driving under the influence were released.
In Utah, a man released early because of COVID-19 concerns last month has already been rearrested. He is accused of breaking into a woman’s home, tying her up at knifepoint and threatening to kill her if she didn’t give him the PIN codes for her bank cards.
