Rapid response efforts to quell the spread of the novel coronavirus are revealing deeply embedded structural inefficiencies within countless institutions in American society—the criminal legal system being no different.
Earlier this month, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that the state’s new hand sanitizer would be manufactured by incarcerated laborers at New York’s Great Meadow Correctional Facility. The announcement made visible just one of the ways prison labor is typically used to address the needs of the public, and drew outrage both within New York and nationally. More often, though, labor performed by incarcerated laborers goes unnoticed and unreported, even as it supplies goods and services critical to the operation of our society, from license plates to laundry.