During the coronavirus crisis, inmates continue to work in American prisons, and businesses connected to the system reap profits.
As factories and other businesses remain shuttered across America, people in prisons in at least 40 states continue going to work. Sometimes they earn pennies an hour, or nothing at all, making masks and hand sanitizer to help guard others from the coronavirus.
The coronavirus outbreak has put an unlikely spotlight on America’s jails and prisons, which house more than 2.2 million people and have been described by health experts as petri dishes as the virus spreads.Masks and hand sanitizer often aren’t provided. Testing is rarely carried out, even among those with symptoms, despite fears that surrounding communities may be affected. And in some parts of the country, those sickened by the virus languish in sweltering buildings with poor ventilation.
More than 20,000 prisoners have been infected and 295 have died nationwide — from Rikers Island in New York City to federal, state and local lockups coast to coast, according to an unofficial tally kept by the COVID-19 Behind Bars Data Project run by UCLA School of Law. Today, some of corporate America’s biggest names, and many smaller companies, vie for a share of the $80 billion spent on mass incarceration each year in the U.S., roughly half of which stays in the public sector to pay for staff salaries and some healthcare costs, according to the Massachusetts-based nonprofit Prison Policy Initiative.released Thursday by New York-based advocacy group Worth Rises detailed some 4,100 corporations that profit from the country’s prisons and jails.
Incarcerated people also work, making such products as license plates, body armor vests and mattresses. In California, some even serve as firefighters. But in some places, they are employed by major corporations such as Minnesota-based 3M.
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