Welcome to The Open Door! This week our special guest will be Prof. Rebecca Ginsburg, of the University of Illinois. She is director of the Education Justice Project, a college-in-prison program that also offers outreach services to families. Prof. Ginsburg has joined us before, and we’re delighted that she will be with us again. The questions we’ll want to ask her include the following. Please feel free to suggest others!
1. How has the coronavirus impacted the Danville prison and other prisons with which you are familiar?
2. Is there adequate public access to what prison conditions are?
3. What health measures is the Danville prison administration taking?
4. Is there a workable testing procedure in place?
5. Can the Education Justice Project still function?
6. As of last week, in Los Angeles, more than half the inmates at the federal prison at Terminal Island have tested positive for the virus. What options should the prison administration be looking at?
7. Do you see any public safety problems that early prison release or furlough programs might pose? If so, do you have any suggestions about ways to address them?
8. Could you tell us about some of the legal limits and considerations that come into play in responding to the virus’s impact on prisoners?
9. Debates about the allocation of resources and triage protocols have a fresh urgency in a pandemic. Aristotle contended that in matters of justice “equals should be treated equally and unequals unequally, according to their relevant differences.” Can we use his standard in today’s debates?
10. What do you take to be the deepest source of human dignity? Does it ground equal human dignity?