CHARLOTTE, N.C. (Michael Gordon and Ames Alexander/ Charlotte Observer) - As the Carolinas publicly scramble to limit the spread of the coronavirus, Mecklenburg County’s criminal justice system has begun quietly reducing the inmate population at its uptown jail.
As of Tuesday, about four dozen of the jail’s 1,600 occupants have been scheduled for release, part of an ongoing case-by-case analysis by judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys of who needs to be in custody during the emerging pandemic and who does not.
More releases are expected in the coming days.
Jails and prisons are seen as particularly high-risk targets of COVID-19, the potentially deadly disease that has claimed thousands of lives worldwide and has now cropped up in all 50 states.
Other U.S. jurisdictions — San Francisco and Philadelphia, among them — have been releasing jail inmates in high-profile efforts to reduce the risk of cellblock outbreaks of the disease.
