Coronavirus has shown that it is possible to change the US criminal justice system

Dismantling mass incarceration in the United States is not a question of possibility or costs, but a matter of imagination and will. Take the relationship between the criminal legal system and the Covid-19 outbreak. Families and activists have demanded the release of people currently detained in jails, prisons and immigrant detention facilities, and in some cases, they have won. New York has released 300 elders from Rikers Island – not enough, but a start. Massachusetts courts, under pressure from activists, are considering whether to release anyone. When California released an additional 3,100 people from prison, a media outlet was sure to note that Governor Gavin Newsom’s order included sentence commutations for “killers”.

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What changed? The easy answer is that Covid-19 became a pandemic. Globally, more than 1.2m people have contracted the virus and upwards of 70,000 have succumbed. In the United States, the figures are over 336,000 and 10,000, respectively. Suddenly, student loan deferments, suspended mortgages, calls against evictions, direct cash payments to families and releasing portions of the incarcerated population have all become not only politically possible, but desirable.

But these political gains have already faced serious setbacks.

First: despite the urgent need for cities and states to decrease their prison populations to protect inmates and staff from Covid-19, and despite the general inability of carceral facilities to offer adequate treatment and protection, the political winds have already shifted in a more regressive direction. Federal prisons are now requiring a two-week quarantine instead of release.

Second: the public battle against Covid-19 has had the effect of empowering another pillar of the prison industrial complex – policing. Thirty states have issued stay-at-home orders enforceable by law enforcement and stacked with fines, citations and even jail time. We cannot let the confusion of the crisis further entrench mass incarceration.

Through the Arab spring, Occupy Wall Street, and the Ferguson uprising, a full generation of activists have used street protests and social media to resist state repression, violence and policing. Those options are now limited. Notwithstanding the pandemic, American police have still killed at least 57 people since 1 March. Last year, the police killed 253 during the first quarter; this year, it is 227, a difference of 26 people.

But so much is lost in the numbers. Television coverage is almost exclusively on the rapidly spreading Covid-19. Public approval of the police is increasing because the police are considered first responders to the pandemic. Police victims are most likely poor, people of color, or First Nations. Taken together, reporting on police violence, and the lives of their victims, would be unpopular. What would have happened if a Chicago officer had shot Laquan McDonald in the back, 16 times, while we were all under quarantine?

We are at risk of police violence generally, and now specifically through this pandemic. In Los Angeles, police are reportedly stopping drivers to inquire about their destinations and issuing $400 citations. Rhode Island’s governor ordered state troopers to profile and stop cars with out-of-state license plates. Maryland and Washington DC have issued enforcement orders that are punishable by arrest, a fine up to $1,000 and six months in jail. Even Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers are still conducting raids to destroy lives, while wearing N95 masks that could be used to save lives.

All these additional surveillance tools are added on top of broken windows policing, racial profiling and stop-and-frisks. If this path continues, people newly freed from jails could find themselves returning to the increasingly occupied communities from where they were arrested, only to be replaced by new waves of arrestees vulnerable to contracting Covid-19 in jail.

State divestment from poor neighborhoods, black communities and immigrant circles inevitably means that these groups will be policed the most aggressively and suffer the worst burden of enforcement. “Staying home” – in overcrowded and sometimes dilapidated housing – is much easier sung in a PSA than practiced. Some states permit families to hike together for fresh air yet still outlaw families standing together outside as “loitering”. Near my neighborhood, the police monitor a group of black teenagers who stand at the traffic light with squeegees and window spray. I’m used to chatting with the kids on weekends. Now, t-shirts and hoodies hug their faces. They nod and smile with their eyes for any pocket change to clean cars before the signal switches. I fear for their safety from the coronavirus. And also from the police.

As I watch, I think: This is dangerous. They should be inside. They should be learning. Where are their parents? Then, I remember: the teenagers who have adequate safe space and food and activities and quality educational options would probably not be standing outside during a global pandemic for hours for one dollar in the first place.

What should we do? How will we enforce social distancing without police? As activists, lawyers, organizers and artists build resources to show us the way, one important step is recognizing what police cannot do. Law enforcement cannot stop the coronavirus. They cannot even stop it among their own ranks. And because politicians refuse free and widely accessible testing and treatment, they risk the lives of police officers, their families and the rest of us by putting sick officers on the street. More than 1,000 officers in the New York police department reportedly have coronavirus, as well as 160 New Jersey officers, and at least 500 Detroit officers have been quarantined for possible sickness and exposure.

Another important step is to learn what communities are doing right now. Activist organizations are urging police to give warnings to people who violate coronavirus curfews, rather than coming into contact for arrests and citations. This effort would limit contact and decrease transmission between police and residents. Many people are joining or building mutual aid groups to share resources so that people can limit their exposure to Covid-19.

In all of this we must continue to fight for a more egalitarian society in the future. In a country with universal healthcare, perhaps people with regular access to quality care would have stronger immune systems to fight the virus. Workers would own the factories that produce our goods and would have better working conditions because they are vested in their own health. Artists would have a basic income and would not worry how to pay for rent or bills. Hotels would not sit empty while homeless people sleep in concrete squares on parking lots – we would have universal housing. Addictions, relapses and overdoses would subside because people are not stressed from economic and climate catastrophe. Property would be communal so that anyone, regardless of neighborhood, could have fresh air and sunlight. People would not be forced to stay in domestic violence relationships because their partner is the breadwinner or has health insurance. Families could rotate neighborhood garden visits for fresh food instead of hoarding groceries and tissue from their neighbors.

Through strengthened social relationships, people would have less incentive to leave their homes, and we could solve problems without cages and guns.

• Derecka Purnell is a Guardian US columnist