Dear Editor:

The Herald consistently refers to those who have died of the coronavirus in our local prisons merely as “offenders” or “inmates,” without any further detail. This is dehumanizing. Because they were unfortunate enough to be actually locked up during the pandemic, rather than merely locked down, their prison sentences wound up being life sentences, and death sentences. Whether they were in for bad checks or something worse, they deserved better.

Instead of defining them namelessly based solely on their worst moments, you might tell us something about them as human beings. Because that’s what they were. Lest we forget, they were human beings. 

Marcus Pendergrass

Farmville