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Description
Tracing the narratives of five incarcerated individuals, Corridors of Contagion speaks to the devastating impact of surviving the pandemic inside prison walls.
Corridors of Contagion brings to light the experiences of five people incarcerated across the United States as they navigate the onset of the pandemic-and the many months, stretched into years, that followed. Journalist Victoria Law combines this storytelling with a trenchant analysis of the structural failures of the US carceral system: failures that made prisons uniquely vulnerable to COVID-19 outbreaks, from overcrowding to solitary confinement, from insufficient healthcare to life sentences.
The book portrays the horrors of continual lockdowns not in the comfort of one's own home, but in prisons where routine violence and chaos is made even more unimaginable by the complete lack of control over protection from a terrifying and lethal new virus. The pandemic provided an opportunity for lawmakers and policy makers to rethink the nation's addiction to perpetual punishment. Instead, US jails and prisons doubled down on punishment under the guise of pandemic protections. As a result, people behind bars experienced increased stress, mental health challenges, increased violence, and higher rates of deaths, many of which could have been prevented.
While the pandemic emergency has been declared over, we are continuing to learn more about the extent of its destruction. Corridors of Contagion reminds readers about both the particular horrors experienced by people in cages and the continued role of the US as the world's prison nation.
Corridors of Contagion brings to light the experiences of five people incarcerated across the United States as they navigate the onset of the pandemic-and the many months, stretched into years, that followed. Journalist Victoria Law combines this storytelling with a trenchant analysis of the structural failures of the US carceral system: failures that made prisons uniquely vulnerable to COVID-19 outbreaks, from overcrowding to solitary confinement, from insufficient healthcare to life sentences.
The book portrays the horrors of continual lockdowns not in the comfort of one's own home, but in prisons where routine violence and chaos is made even more unimaginable by the complete lack of control over protection from a terrifying and lethal new virus. The pandemic provided an opportunity for lawmakers and policy makers to rethink the nation's addiction to perpetual punishment. Instead, US jails and prisons doubled down on punishment under the guise of pandemic protections. As a result, people behind bars experienced increased stress, mental health challenges, increased violence, and higher rates of deaths, many of which could have been prevented.
While the pandemic emergency has been declared over, we are continuing to learn more about the extent of its destruction. Corridors of Contagion reminds readers about both the particular horrors experienced by people in cages and the continued role of the US as the world's prison nation.
Product Details
| Publisher | Haymarket Books |
| Publish Date | September 10, 2024 |
| Pages | 264 |
| Language | English |
| Type |  Hardback |
| EAN/UPC | 9798888903001 |
| Dimensions | 8.5 X 5.5 X 0.6 inches | 1.0 pounds |
About the Author
Victoria Law is an author and freelance journalist focusing on the intersections of incarceration, gender and resistance. Her books include Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women, Prison By Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reform, and "Prisons Make Us Safer" and 20 Other Myths About Mass Incarceration. Her writings about prisons and other forms of confinement have appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, Wired, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Village Voice, The Guardian, In These Times, HellGate and Truthout. She is a co-founder of Books Through Bars--NYC and the zine Tenacious: Art and Writings by Women in Prison.
Reviews
"With Corridors of Contagion, Vikki Law shows how the Covid-19 pandemic, with its largely unheeded calls for decarceration, was a missed opportunity not only to free those for whom there is a structural propensity to be locked up and locked down, but to radically expand the reach of freedom for all. For years, Law's expert investigations and discerning analyses have been indispensable to anti-prison campaigns and to the international abolitionist movement more broadly, and this book is no less so."
-Angela Y. Davis, Professor Emerita at University of California, Santa Cruz, and author, Freedom Is a Constant Struggle
"[A]n accessible primer on abolitionist theory, told through intimate stories of prison life in the pandemic" .... "Law uplifts her correspondents' voices with forceful language and vivid imagery" ... "Between those personal stories, Law supplies extensive context about the U.S. prison system and prison resistance." ... "It also offers a concise entry point to abolitionist histories of the U.S. prison system, synthesizing a wide array of data and scholarship with clarity and focus."Whether you're new to police and prison abolition or a more experienced reader looking for abolitionist analysis of our current moment, Corridors of Contagion is a necessary read. Its narratives will also be very useful for those interested in documenting the pandemic and staying prepared for future disasters. Looking from the inside out, we can find power in building new forms of community care outside of government intervention, which Law summarizes in a common abolitionist slogan: 'We keep us safe.'"
-Waging NonViolence
"Through piercing prose that will make you want to scream and in heartrending stories that will make you want to cry, Victoria Law takes readers into the strictest Covid lockdowns in the United States: inside our prisons.Regardless of what they'd been convicted of, more than a million incarcerated Americans were condemned in 2020 to isolation from their families, overcrowded cells ripe for mass infection, and viral death sentences.Though it reads at times like a horror thriller about mass social murder, Corridors of Contagion is also a compassionate love letter to and from those who were most lethally affected by the novel coronavirus. A masterpiece in the emerging field of Covid literature, and a roadmap for why prison abolition is paramount to stopping current and future pandemics, Corridors of Contagion is a heartfelt must-read for anyone who wants to understand why the richest nation on earth has had the most Covid deaths: because the United States incarcerates more people than any other country, and our penitentiaries are killing cages of viral transmission."
-Steven W. Thrasher, author of the award-winning book The Viral Underclass
"Corridors of Contagion will both move and enrage you. Victoria Law uses her exceptional investigative abilities & her immense compassion to expose how the COVID pandemic ravaged prisons and endangered incarcerated people. This book recounts a tragic history, but it also provides a vital glimpse into how mutual aid works behind the walls. The lives and voices of the incarcerated people featured by Law will reverberate long after you have finished reading the book. As they should."
-Mariame Kaba, author of We Do This 'Til We Free Us
"Don't look away, Victoria Law's searing book insists. Corridors of Contagion powerfully brings us into the actual lockdown of the pandemic- the experiences of incarcerated people forced to endure COVID behind bars. But the book also vividly demonstrates the ways incarcerated men and women fashioned ways to protect, defend, and educate each other, when the state abandoned them. Law
-Angela Y. Davis, Professor Emerita at University of California, Santa Cruz, and author, Freedom Is a Constant Struggle
"[A]n accessible primer on abolitionist theory, told through intimate stories of prison life in the pandemic" .... "Law uplifts her correspondents' voices with forceful language and vivid imagery" ... "Between those personal stories, Law supplies extensive context about the U.S. prison system and prison resistance." ... "It also offers a concise entry point to abolitionist histories of the U.S. prison system, synthesizing a wide array of data and scholarship with clarity and focus."Whether you're new to police and prison abolition or a more experienced reader looking for abolitionist analysis of our current moment, Corridors of Contagion is a necessary read. Its narratives will also be very useful for those interested in documenting the pandemic and staying prepared for future disasters. Looking from the inside out, we can find power in building new forms of community care outside of government intervention, which Law summarizes in a common abolitionist slogan: 'We keep us safe.'"
-Waging NonViolence
"Through piercing prose that will make you want to scream and in heartrending stories that will make you want to cry, Victoria Law takes readers into the strictest Covid lockdowns in the United States: inside our prisons.Regardless of what they'd been convicted of, more than a million incarcerated Americans were condemned in 2020 to isolation from their families, overcrowded cells ripe for mass infection, and viral death sentences.Though it reads at times like a horror thriller about mass social murder, Corridors of Contagion is also a compassionate love letter to and from those who were most lethally affected by the novel coronavirus. A masterpiece in the emerging field of Covid literature, and a roadmap for why prison abolition is paramount to stopping current and future pandemics, Corridors of Contagion is a heartfelt must-read for anyone who wants to understand why the richest nation on earth has had the most Covid deaths: because the United States incarcerates more people than any other country, and our penitentiaries are killing cages of viral transmission."
-Steven W. Thrasher, author of the award-winning book The Viral Underclass
"Corridors of Contagion will both move and enrage you. Victoria Law uses her exceptional investigative abilities & her immense compassion to expose how the COVID pandemic ravaged prisons and endangered incarcerated people. This book recounts a tragic history, but it also provides a vital glimpse into how mutual aid works behind the walls. The lives and voices of the incarcerated people featured by Law will reverberate long after you have finished reading the book. As they should."
-Mariame Kaba, author of We Do This 'Til We Free Us
"Don't look away, Victoria Law's searing book insists. Corridors of Contagion powerfully brings us into the actual lockdown of the pandemic- the experiences of incarcerated people forced to endure COVID behind bars. But the book also vividly demonstrates the ways incarcerated men and women fashioned ways to protect, defend, and educate each other, when the state abandoned them. Law
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