Hi and welcome to six feet apart. I'm Alex Wagner. The pandemic has upended life as we know it.

And yet some systems, health care, transportation, the food supply chain, they found a way to go on because, quite simply, they didn't have a choice.

The criminal justice system is one of those essential institutions that has been forced to

grapple with the outbreak of COVID-19 and chart a course around it, or more specifically, through

it.

And our criminal justice system, in particular, is faced with the greatest challenge of them

all.

That's because America locks more people up

than any other country in the world. By a lot. With all of our trials and prosecutions and sentences,

with our abundance of crowded prisons and tightly packed cells, how do you protect, isolate,

quarantine, and otherwise slow the heavy rolling

machinery of the American justice system? That's what we're going to talk about today.

Justice. What happens when criminal and civil trials are basically put on ice? How do you

protect law enforcement and also keep the

public safe from six feet away? And how do you stay healthy and alive in prison? First, we're going to

speak with the new district attorney of San Francisco, Chesa Boudin. Chesa, a former public defender

whose father has been in jail for close to Chesa's

entire life, was elected on a progressive platform and sworn into office five months ago.

Ending the era of mass incarceration helped get him elected, but no one had any idea that a major

release of prisoners would come as the result of a pandemic.

And then we'll speak to Marybeth Hill, an inmate at a federal prison in Greenville, Illinois.

Marybeth was sentenced to 36 months in prison for the sale of narcotics.

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