People often talk about incarcerating people as sending them “away.” One of the lessons we are facing in the COVID-19 pandemic is one incarcerated people and their loved ones have always known—there is no such thing as “away”. People do not disappear; they go TO prisons. 1/4 https://twitter.com/Common_Justice/status/1250141023805804545

And prisons are never fully apart from free society. People (family members and loved ones, guards, staff, people who are released) come and go from them every day. What happens in them is transmitted to communities and vice versa. 2/4

COVID-19 makes those routes clear. But it is not just viruses that transverse them. The violence inherent in prisons always becomes a feature not just of incarceration, but of our society. The harm we inflict on people is never contained behind the walls. 3/4

Just as people who are free will not be safe from COVID so long as incarcerated people are not safe, so too will any attempts our society makes at safety and wellbeing overall be undercut by prisons so long as they exist. We belong to each other and we always have. 4/4