The Covid-19 is really making impossible possible. It can also make police to release their prisoners. It’s reported that Indonesia is set to release about 30,000 prisoners early. This is because Indonesia wants to avoid a possible surge in coronavirus infections in its overcrowded prisons.
As per the statistic, Indonesia has 1,677 coronavirus cases by Wednesday, almost double the number a week ago. There have been 157 deaths and only 103 recoveries. Thus with this number increase, the government has imposed a large-scale social distancing that includes the closure of schools and offices and a ban on religious gatherings, but still allows some economic activities to go on.
This prisoner release is consider as one of the way to do social distancing and ensuring the pandemic is control.
People sentenced to 5-10 years for drug use who have served at least two-thirds of their sentence will also be released. The authorities will keep monitoring the released inmates once they are out of jail.
This is not something new where even other countries have also taken the same measure to avoid mass infection of the coronavirus inside their prisons. Iran has released 85,000 prisoners, Afghanistan 10,000 and the United States over a thousand.