The Bronx Defenders, in collaboration with UCLA Law School’s COVID-19 Behind Bars Data Project, Columbia Law School’s Center for Institutional and Social Change, and Zealous, is proud to announce the launch of an electronic database of COVID-19 related materials designed to help lawyers, advocates, researchers, journalists, and others interested in challenging, remedying, or drawing attention to the grave risk that COVID-19 poses to individuals who are detained. The COVID-19 database is a project of “Health is Justice,” an advocacy hub that aims to decarcerate and replace punishment with public health.
The first phase of the project — a public spreadsheet tracking hundreds of COVID-19 related decisions — is now live. The database flags a number of salient features of decisions relevant to advocates, including pre-existing health conditions, the legal basis for claims, defenses raised, whether an individual has COVID-19, past criminal convictions, conditions of release, and outcomes. Each decision is also accompanied by a short summary. At the moment, this database includes primarily decisions involving individuals in federal criminal detention and immigration detention, but it will soon expand to more cases involving state jails and prisons.
The second phase of the project will launch in the coming weeks. It will include more detailed advanced search functions, a more user-friendly platform, and a database of example briefs similarly categorized with relevant information about the nature of claims and individuals involved.
We hope that you will find this tool useful. And we encourage you to contact us regarding decisions that you do not yet see in the database, as well as to facilitate sharing your own COVID-19 related briefing with other advocates and lawyers.
If you have any questions or suggestions, please reach out to tscott-railton@bronxdefenders.org or ajain@bronxdefenders.org.
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