Carceral Responses to the Pandemic in Europe: Casting a Light on Prison Harms, Inequalities and Pre-Trial Detention

Societies, at least their humanity and respect for human rights, can be measured by how they treat the most vulnerable segments of the population, in particular in times of crisis. While the pandemic has heightened various vulnerabilities and generally exposed our everyday inequalities, the situation has been particularly dire for certain groups whose manoeuvring space for mitigating adversities has considerably shrunk. Some of the groups often mentioned in this context have been domestic violence victims, the homeless, children and the elderly (especially but not exclusively those in retirement homes), front-line workers as well as prisoners or, more generally, detainees. Pandemic, from Late Latin pandemus and Greek pandemos, etymologically suggests that it is something that affects all people, the ‘all’ (pan-) of dēmos; yet, on closer inspection, it became evident it did not affect all equally. It was over a year ago when these issues came to the fore, however, a year later, the general pandemic situation in Europe is not as drastically different as one had hoped. Back in late spring 2020, many believed that we would most likely have to learn to live with the infection until the vaccine became available, hoping that with the advent of the vaccine (or vaccines), the path to recovery and return to ‘normal’ would be speedier. In the meantime, the vaccine has indeed been made available (albeit not equally across the world)1 Editorial