If someone is incarcerated for a technical violation or a “nonviolent offense” & they die from coronavirus, it is a tragedy.

But ppl should be mindful of language that suggest that it would have been okay if someone who *did* commit harm becomes sick & dies. It’s still a life.

There is already so much language embedded in our conversations around the criminal legal system that implicitly, or explicitly, suggest some incarcerated ppl are more worthy of empathy, of second chances, of mourning than others. That language is spilling into the covid response

The vast majority of the young men I work with at DC jail are there for offenses the system would call violent.

They are also brothers & sons & husbands & boyfriends & fathers & friends & people who fear for their lives while they watch this virus explode around them.