In the context of the covid-19 pandemic, the early release of prisoners, requested by the World Health Organization, members of civil society and nongovernmental organizations, was considered a “humane" decision”. However, the policies adopted over the last 18 months put in evidence a somehow misleading choice between the outright rejection of early release under any circumstances and the precipitousness to free people who were undoubtedly in a fragile situation as a means to fulfill a political agenda, thus in effect abandoning, rather than liberating them. In this presentation, I reflect about the Portuguese context, discussing the way the urgency and fear of contagion highlighted, once more, the inability of prisons to cope with the needs both of those who confines and of those who intends to protect. I argue that, this was one more instance revealing that, when policies, theories, legislation, codes of conduct and rules are applied in such a blindfold, standardized and uniform manner, the outcome is bound to be flawed while simultaneously achieving what was so far a continuously postponed prison reform: reducing the numbers of incarcerated population.

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