I received a set of responses to a Tweet I posted regarding @RepKarenBass @KarenBassTweets position on the application of social distancing and her expressing to desire of states releasing inmates from prison because of the #Coronavirus. This is my response. [A thread...]

This Coronavirus situation has asked many Americans to rise to the challenge, not just for folks to meet the moment and volunteer, but also to come up with out-of-the-box solutions to problems many businesses and government agencies are experiencing for the first time.

We’ve seen factories, like @MyPillow, retool their production line to change from making home goods, to making face masks. We’ve seen factories, like @Ford, and @GE, retool their production line to go from making cars to making ventilators.

That’s the beauty of America, we rise to the occasion to solve problems. We don’t absolve ourselves of responsibility by taking the easy way out. Releasing inmates en masse is taking the easy way out. Here is a point-by-point explanation:

You ask, “what do you do with doctors, nurses, and medical staff?” Currently, doctors, nurses, and medical staff still go home to their families, but as healthcare professionals, there are hygiene protocols that they go through to mitigate transmission of COVID-19. Check @CDCgov

Otherwise, your argument would mean that all doctors should stay home to eliminate all risk of transmission…but then we’d have no way of servicing sick people in hospitals, now would we? We’re still gonna need doctors no matter what the ailment. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/infection-control-recommendations.html

You ask, “what about mental health physicians?” They too fall under healthcare professionals. Mental health physicians, don’t only have to deal with the threat of the virus, but also the threat of gauging the danger of the mentally unsound while treating them.

Historically, re-releasing inmates en masse, has not ended well in some cases. Take for instance the recidivism that happens in New York when @NYCMayor Bill DeBlasio short-sightedly releases criminals back onto the street early without vetting or getting them proper treatment.

You ask, “what about the correctional officers, and the staff…and the prison labor staff?” You act as if short-term housing on-site, or just off-site is not a possibility. We just watched American cities transform their convention centers to erect beds and temporary structures.

I even saw an article about a company that had its factory workers sleep at the factory for the past month to make medical masks. Incredible how Americans can come together to solve problems and be creative.

Now I’m not saying the jail/prison staff should live IN the prison structure itself, but if a city can find temporary housing for homeless by buying out hotel rooms, or by erecting temporary pop-up housing, then the same can be done for jails/prisons to keep correctional...

...staff away from getting their families sick or tracking the ailment from home to the inmates. Will there be service staff who will see their family less because of this? Yes. That's a given. They didn’t pick a cushy office accounting job, they picked the corrections industry.

Was recognizing the ever-looming threat of a medical ailment possibly happening a part of their career in the corrections industry? Yes. They deal with a revolving door of inmates, and it’s their job to, at the very least, have a basic InfraRed-thermometer to check temperatures.

When someone commits a crime, they should atone for it. When that criminal commits a crime, and then is quickly released, that sends a message that there is no repercussion for their actions. That is a dangerous precedent to set with people who clearly have no regard for the law.

We see that happening with the effects of California’s Prop 47, Prop 57, AB109, and SB54, which have the effect of fast-tracking inmates back out onto the street with nary any system in place to curb recidivism. And California AB392 legislatively handcuffs the police.

Similar legislation in other states results in water buckets being dumped on police officers, because miscreants know that their own city’s law enforcement has been legislatively paralyzed, so to them, the city is their playground - a free-for-all.

We should not haphazardly release criminals in fear of the possibility of a health risk. Take for instance the 35-time arrested criminal in Florida, who was re-released…only to murder someone the following day. Now that family of the victim has every reason to sue the city.

Your argument for releasing inmates en masse assumes that these criminals will be safer back outside prison, but you must remember, many of these inmates aren’t going back to a family, in a home...

...they’re going back to a homeless shelter, or straight back onto the street, where there are increased opportunities for them to quickly transmit the disease, in an environment that is completely unregulated and unhygienic.

In the last point-in-time survey that happened in California in January, 2019 it was recorded that there are some 59,000 homeless people in Los Angeles County, and 129,700 in California…and those were the people the surveyors were able to count! The actual number is much higher.

We’ve seen over the past few years, roach infestations, rat infestations, spent needles abound, and human beings left to their own devices to defecate on the streets. We’ve seen typhus and typhoid make a comeback, and the ever-looming threat of the bubonic plague.

If you really care about the inmates, you won’t release them into the same filth and squalor that would put them at heightened risk of infection and catching coronavirus.

In the past month, Los Angeles County Sheriff, Alex Villanueva, has been responsible for releasing some 4,000+ inmates from Twin Towers and other correctional facilities, and in the very next breath, making the directive to close gun stores and send deputies to enforce it.

Now, law-abiding citizens can’t protect themselves from the criminals released onto the streets to terrorize our neighborhoods. Of course that was swiftly fought by patriots who won't allow our #2A rights to be infringed. We will not roll over and have our rights taken away.

We need to get out of our feelings when addressing important life-and-death issues. We Republicans need for @TheDemocrats to stop making emotional decisions and employing emotional arguments. Get your emotions out of the equation, and start making logic-based decisions.