Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill recently chided those of us who have argued that states should reduce their prison populations to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. He claimed that the move to release the most vulnerable from prison was just “the ACLU” imploring “government at all levels to release as many inmates as possible back onto our streets.”

We aren’t members of the ACLU; we are a former federal prosecutor and a former federal prisoner-turned-law professor. Unlike Hill, we study the criminal justice system as a whole to determine the best ways to balance public safety against the deep social and fiscal costs of incarceration. And we strongly agree that releasing vulnerable prisoners is not just good public health policy but good criminal justice policy.