Dignifying Detention During Covid: Opportunity, Humiliation and Death

Societal questions about punishment are not new, but practices of incarceration, in particular mass incarceration, in the United States have gained increased attention of late. In this presentation, I argue that the dignity should play a role in moral analysis of incarceration. I focus on the COVID-19 pandemic and how it has affected incarcerated persons. To support my claims, I take a multi-disciplinary, interprofessional approach to bioethics – relying on work from political theory, moral philosophy, the law, medicine, criminal justice, and the dramatic arts.