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HOW PANDEMIC-ERA PRISON LIFE SHOWS THE STAKES OF ABOLITION  
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Justin A. Davis
September 17, 2024
Waging Nonviolence
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_ Victoria Law’s new book is an accessible primer on abolitionist
theory, told through intimate stories of prison life in the pandemic.
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A few months before COVID became a permanent part of life in the U.S.,
the New York City Council approved a plan to shut down the infamous
jail complex
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as Rikers Island and replace it with four smaller facilities. (That
plan was later delayed — and city officials have since acknowledged
that they likely won’t meet the plan’s legal deadline
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The vote to close Rikers Island came from years of extensive
grassroots organizing by reformists and abolitionists alike. But for
those left caged there in 2020, the risks posed by COVID were
immediate — not just illness and death, but new forms of the
isolation, neglect and violence that already shape life inside. 

Across the ideological spectrum, public discourse at the time was
often quick to compare quarantines and public lockdowns to
incarceration. Abolitionist writer David Campbell observed that
rhetoric closely as he spent time incarcerated on Rikers Island
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2020. For Campbell, these flawed comparisons held a grain of truth
that could help “[broaden] the abolition movement’s personal
appeal. … For the first time in living memory, any given
abolitionist can assume any given passerby has lived through something
vaguely resembling incarceration.” 

At the same time, one of the biggest barriers to transforming the
carceral state is that gap in lived experience. For most Americans,
our image of incarceration is constantly obscured by government
rhetoric, punitive traditions of justice, pop culture and the walls
themselves. With the onset of COVID, that obscuring effect only grew
worse. Through each new wave and variant, inmates around the country
have fought to care for themselves and make their struggles visible
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Prison abolition has become a mainstream concept, but the lives of
those held in jails, prisons and immigrant detention facilities remain
far too abstract
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Journalist Victoria Law’s newest book, “Corridors of Contagion:
How the Pandemic Exposed the Cruelties of Incarceration,”
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pandemic-era prison life to introduce the guiding principles of
abolition. “During the first year of the pandemic,” Law writes
that she “received hundreds of letters from people imprisoned across
the nation about conditions caused by the coronavirus.” Five of
those people (Kwaneta, Jack, Malakki, Mary and Mwalimu) kept up with
Law over three years of written correspondence, phone and video calls.
Drawing from those conversations, “Corridors of Contagion” follows
them through the pandemic in prison, telling intimate stories of how
they tried to stay safe, connect to loved ones, engage in political
struggle and fight to be released. In the process, Law argues that
abolitionist thought and practice can offer special insight into the
COVID era more broadly: a missed “opportunity to rethink the flawed
logic of the U.S. criminal legal system.”

The book largely proceeds chronologically through the pandemic, with
the bulk focused on its first year. By grounding her writing in
long-term narratives, Law gives readers a unique view of the turmoil,
pain and possibility of that year. We see prison officials hesitate to
protect inmates and staff during the first weeks of COVID panic.
Inmates protest with handwritten signs during the George Floyd
uprisings. A prison guard celebrates as a nearby radio blares coverage
of the Jan. 6 insurrection. Law notes in her introduction that recent
attempts to document the pandemic have often left out the voices of
incarcerated people; in that context, a book like this is a
much-needed rejoinder.

Across 200 pages, Law uplifts her correspondents’ voices with
forceful language and vivid imagery. When Jack yells descriptions of
the outside to Kwaneta “through their shared air vent,” or when
Mary rehearses jokes for a talent show on her prison yard, you can
feel their efforts to find joy, peace and connection within extreme
states of confinement. Colors, smells and scraps of conversation fill
in the gaps. Even though “Corridors of Contagion” jumps back and
forth between facilities, Law’s eye for detail makes them all feel
fleshed out, bustling with activity as the threat of COVID created new
routines and policies inside.

Between those personal stories, Law supplies extensive context about
the U.S. prison system and prison resistance. Chapter Two borrows the
term “prison nation” (coined by University of Illinois at Chicago
Professor Beth Richie
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how “the United States has a long history of weaponizing confinement
against marginalized people.” I could imagine a version of this book
that doesn’t zoom out in the same way, but it helps illustrate one
of Law’s central arguments: that the structural forces shaping U.S.
prisons have consistently made them hotspots for the spread of
disease. 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.

But the book’s most powerful moments come when Law weaves this
background knowledge with inmates’ personal stories, showing how
prisoners’ efforts to care for each other formed a distinct model of
political resistance. One chapter describes Kwaneta “shouting
through the door of her solitary cell” to educate neighbors about
sexual and reproductive health. In another, Mlawimu describes
“practicing socialism” in his unit, sharing fans and cups of ice
during California’s extreme heat waves. For Law, these acts of
collective care embody the abolitionist spirit, as prisoners
repeatedly risked punishment and increased confinement to provide what
carceral institutions would not.

When we re-examine the pandemic from inside carceral institutions, we
can see how prisoners’ experiences complicate our usual narratives
of those first few years. For example, Law notes how raids by prison
guards “clad in riot gear” led to a COVID outbreak at one prison
in California. As health experts warned against the widespread use of
tear gas and pepper spray
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the George Floyd uprisings, Law points out that pepper spray has been
a fact of life for incarcerated people before and during the pandemic.
While other parts of the U.S. government implemented policies to
reduce the spread of COVID, routine instances of state violence
directly contributed to rising case numbers.

“Corridors of Contagion” offers vital lessons when many people in
the U.S. have moved past the idea that COVID-19 is an ongoing threat
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while reckoning with the loss of pre-pandemic “normalcy.”
Inmates’ narratives of the early pandemic show how many of those
most vulnerable to COVID were deemed disposable by the governments
that housed them. But Law also describes a moment when social
movements were experimenting with public health and decarceration as
mutually beneficial paths toward social transformation — both inside
and outside of jails, prisons and immigration detention facilities.
“Without a more permanent record,” she asks, “would the general
public, once masks and social distancing were discarded, forget about
the long genealogy of policies, laws and conditions that exacerbated
the pandemic — and, if left unchanged and unaddressed, would it
again prove fatally inadequate when the next crisis hit?”

This summer, cases have surged again
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multiple new variants, waning immunity from vaccines and the
abandonment of disease mitigation strategies. A lack of widespread
testing and data collection makes it difficult to determine just how
severe this surge really is. At the same time, state and local
governments are increasingly experimenting with mask bans
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rely on ambiguous language and fear-mongering about crime and protest.
More than a year after the federal government’ Public Health
Emergency for COVID-19 expired, the social safety nets
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to keep millions afloat have started to expire, too.

Although jail and prison populations dropped in the first few months
of the pandemic, they began to regrow
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the virus.” As the Prison Policy Institute writes
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become increasingly central to political debate — and are even
scapegoated to resurrect old, ineffective ‘tough on crime’
policies.” A “return to normal” in public health has coincided
with a “return to normal” in the U.S. carceral system — which
continues to hold more people per capita than any other country. In
both cases, Law and her correspondents suggest that we can hold on to
the political imagination of COVID-era social movements while adapting
it to our ever-shifting terrain.

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.”

_Justin Davis is a writer and labor organizer. His poems are published
or forthcoming in places like Washington Square Review, Anomaly,
wildness, Up the Staircase Quarterly, and Apogee Journal. He’s
published non-fiction with Scalawag, Science for the People and Labor
Notes. He's been nominated for Best of the Net, Best Microfiction, and
the Pushcart Prize. He lives in Memphis, Tennessee._

_Waging Nonviolence is a nonprofit media organization dedicated to
providing original reporting and expert analysis of social movements
around the world. With a commitment to accuracy, transparency and
editorial independence, we examine today’s most crucial issues by
shining a light on those who are organizing for just and peaceful
solutions._

* Prison Abolition
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* Mass Incarceration
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* COVID-19
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