The Point Being: A conversation with reporter Stephanie Casanova

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This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Question: You do a lot of coronavirus update stories, where do you get that info from, and why is it important?

Stephanie Casanova: The updates I work on are anything from day-to-day case numbers to just working from press releases to give people bits of information at a time. Every morning, Gloria Knott, another reporter at the Daily Star, does the morning daily count that the state puts out.

And up until this weekend, I was doing the (Pima) County numbers. As of this last weekend, the counties are starting to direct everyone to the state page. So I’m kind of just looking out for other bits of numbers, like how many people in jails might have the coronavirus, and if any information about the people who have died comes up, I would write a brief (short article) about that.

Basically, I cover a lot. Now we’re seeing things like loans for small businesses that are struggling. If we get any info on that, whether it’s local or federal help, I will write a brief that tells people how to apply for those. And things like people helping make masks for people.

Also, if you need services from the Arizona Department of Motor Vehicles, that’s an update I would write up that would give you quick, easy access to information and we keep a log of all of our daily updates, including longer stories. We keep the daily log on our website, tucson.com.

Q: Are Pima County jails and courts figuring out ways to reduce jail populations to reduce the chance of spread of COVID-19?

Basically what they were trying to do at the Pima County jail is, cells that would normally house two inmates, they want to free those up a little bit so that if somebody has to be isolated because they’re feeling sick, they can do that. They want to be able to put one person in those two-person cells.

It was an initiative where Pima County Sheriff Mark Napier asked, really he kind of suggested, the kinds of inmates that could potentially be released from jail — people serving time on like weekends only and then being released for work during the weekday. The intent was to try to make that not really a thing anymore because the in-and-out nature is what’s concerning.

As far as whether or not coronavirus gets into the jail, they basically asked public defenders, the Pima County Attorney’s Office, to look through a list of incarcerated individuals. The public defender’s office put the list together. The county attorney and the public defender’s office collectively went to the courthouse to a judge, and then a judge had to essentially order the sheriff’s department to release them. And so the list was originally about 145 people.

At the end of the day, almost 30 of them were released. And then some were released by other means, whether by the time they got through the list, their time in jail was over or they posted bail, something like that allowed them to be released. So they’re sort of still working on it.

But the idea is it will mean more space and fewer people potentially getting infected with coronavirus if it gets into the jail.

Q: With the encouragement by authorities to social distance and self-isolate, fears of an uptick of domestic violence cases has spiked. Can you explain what variables are important in this calculus?

In general, domestic violence is violence involving anyone who’s a family member or a partner or spouse. But we tend to think of it as just between partners, so I combined child abuse into that story. It’s technically also domestic violence.

With domestic violence, usually with a partner, isolation is already a tactic that abusers use. So if you want to be able to control your partner in a situation, you’re going to try to cut them off from their support system. Isolation is already doing that for some victims, and so that sets an additional danger.

They feel like they can’t leave their home, they’re being asked not to leave their home. Then it makes it harder for them to communicate with their usual support system. Even if it’s just going to work, that respite from that violent relationship, that’s not really there anymore. Also, if the abuser suddenly doesn’t have a job, which also could have been the abuser’s break from abusing their partner, they might have nothing to lose, so they might get even more violent, more aggressive.

And if it gets to that point, and a victim does feel the need to call for help, if they’re stuck in the house where the abuser is, it’s going to be harder to call and find that help. Or to call to file a restraining order or call police to intervene. Any of that gets more difficult.

With child abuse, a lot of times schools are kids’ safe place away from home. In schools, everyone is a mandatory reporter. Your counselors, your teachers, they all look for signs of child abuse.

With kids not going to school, it might be harder to spot those signs and to help those children. Also, a lot of times domestic violence among partners involves children. If a couple gets in a violent relationship, a child might see it and it affects them. A child might accidentally take a hit trying to defend their mom or something like that, and that also affects them. So, it’s kind of like a pretty tangled web of potential dangers for people in those domestic violence relationships