“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 shows how the pandemic should have been a wakeup call to the United States—and what it would take to make it one." —Jeanne Theoharis, author of The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks"This powerful text is what we have been waiting for, essential reading if we are to identify and learn from the failures of the recent past in dealing with a deadly pandemic and the fraught political divide that led to denial and mob violence that haunts the present and future."—Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, historian and author“Incarcerated people in America’s overcrowded, brutal prisons and jails are the canaries in the coal mine of our nation’s waning commitment to civil and human rights, and in Corridors of Contagion accomplished journalist Victoria Law bears witness to the coronavirus emergency’s tragic impact behind bars. One of the United States’ most experienced and well-informed chroniclers of mass incarceration, Law shows in Corridors of Contagion how a once-in-a-lifetime moment could have resulted in safe decarceration across the country, but instead imposed human suffering and preventable death on a trapped and desperate population. In the wake of the carceral public health failures of 2020, Law reveals how many harsh and unnecessary coronavirus policies remain in place today, compounding the isolation of the world’s biggest prison population.”—Piper Kerman, author of Orange is the New Black“Corridors of Contagion is a deeply disturbing account of the convergence of the harsh punishment system in the US and the cruel inequities that propelled the COVID pandemic. Victoria Law has, once again, brought her gift as one of the most passionate social justice storytellers to expose the long-term and deadly consequences of carceral policies and politics. The compelling story she tells must be widely read to challenge the mean spirited prison nation and how a pandemic can further the dangers of it.”—Beth Richie, professor, activist and author of Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence and America’s Prison Nation"With her characteristic evocative storytelling, compelling prose, and razor sharp analysis, Victoria Law delivers another searing look inside the nation's systems of punishment. Law turns an unflinching eye on the cruel operation of structures of punishment in the context of a global pandemic, in which the prison, jailers, and systemic denial of the most basic forms of health care, information, and agency exacerbate their death-making and disabling functions. Law surfaces critical lessons along with defiant acts of humanity, love, and resilience, inviting readers to not turn away from the horrors of prisons but instead to turn toward futures free of them."—Andrea J. Ritchie, co-lead COVID19 Policing Project, co-founder of Interrupting Criminalization, and co-author of No More Police: A Case for Abolition"Corridors of Contagion is an expertly reported account of the malice and incompetence that defined how US prisons and jails responded to the pandemic. Guided by the voices of incarcerated people, journalist Victoria Law shows incontrovertibly what abolitionists on both sides of the walls insisted in March 2020: prison is incompatible with public health."—Dan Berger, author of Stayed on Freedom: The Long History of Black Power Through One Family’s Journey"Victoria Law has meticulously and compassionately documented the often-ignored ways in which the pandemic, in tandem with the brutality of the criminalization system, has wreaked havoc on incarcerated people. Powerfully written and deeply reported, Corridors of Contagion is both a heartbreaking chronicle of injustice and a profound celebration of how people take care of each other in dire times. This book is an essential tool in our struggle to avoid repeating a lethal chapter in history."—Maya Schenwar, co-author of Prison by Any Other Name"Intimate and infuriating, Law - one of our most potent abolitionist journalists - offers a necessary and painful history of COVID behind bars. Reading this book together moves readers to grieve those whom we have lost, to recognize the resistance and ingenuity of people inside and their loved ones, and strengthens our ability to grow movements for people's release."—Erica Meiners, co-author of Abolition.Feminism.Now. and The Feminist and the Sex Offender"Corridors of Contagion is a masterpiece only Victoria Law could have written. She has a vast knowledge of the prison system, incredible connections with incarcerated people, especially those in women's prisons, and an unparalleled ability to tell their stories. Victoria Law has given us a work that provides in-depth understanding of how the dehumanizing carceral system operates at the granular level. No work does this better than Corridors of Contagion."—James Kilgore, formerly incarcerated activist and National Book Award winning author“Corridors of Contagion combines impeccable research, compelling storytelling, and unflinching commitment to abolition, persuasively demonstrating that the COVID pandemic can only be understood if we look carefully at how it has unfolded inside US prisons. Examining the data on COVID in prisons, recording the stories of people living through the first years of the pandemic in prisons, and analyzing the impacts murderous policy responses and non-responses undertaken by prison official and other government officials, Vikki Law raises a call to action for abolition that is essential reading right now, as environmental crisis ensures that new pandemics are inevitably on the horizon. Corridors of Contagion is yet another invaluable contribution from Vikki Law."—Dean Spade, author of Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next)"In Corridors of Contagion, Victoria Law insists that Americans reckon with what we otherwise work so hard not to see: the senseless violence of our penal system, in ordinary times and in crises. An important and deeply disturbing report."—Eric Klinenberg, author, 2020: One City, Seven People, and The Year Everything Changed“Victoria Law, one of the most important journalistic voices on incarceration, has rendered an urgent mosaic of first-person stories of enduring and surviving the ravages of the coronavirus pandemic in U.S. prisons. Through painstaking research and lucid analysis, Corridors of Contagion reveals the devastation of the state’s neglect and weaponization of disease behind bars while also illuminating the ways in which incarcerated people fought for their own and each other’s lives through acts of caring resistance.”—Emily Thuma, author of All Our Trials: Prisons, Policing and the Feminist Fight to End Violence“Corridors of Contagion is probably the most vivid chronicle of survival and resistance that we will ever read about incarceration during the pandemic. But this book is no catalogue of atrocities. The story underneath the story is that Victoria Law has devoted her life to building political and personal connections with women behind bars, and so within this book–in fact, the very condition of possibility for this book–is a rehearsal for life after borders and walls.”—Naomi Murakawa, professor of African American Studies at Princeton University and author of The First Civil Right“It has long been understood that prisons are revelatory of a society’s larger structure. Victoria Law’s powerful account of prison life during the COVID pandemic forces readers to confront the worst state failures, as well as how much the U.S.--as an international outlier–failed to manage this crisis through decarceration. Thanks to Law, and inspired by the creativity of those who persevered, we should know the way forward. One pandemic might have ended but the other persists.”—Gina Dent, co-author of Abolition.Feminism.Now and professor of humanities, University of California, Santa Cruz"In Corridors of Contagion, Victoria Law brings the horror of COVID-19 for incarcerated people to life. Her deep knowledge of the prison system, her boundless empathy for incarcerated people, and the trusting relationships she has built with incarcerated people over her years of telling their stories make Victoria Law the ideal person to report on the spaces where the pandemic hit the hardest—carceral facilities—and to warn us of the devastation that incarcerated people will face if we do not learn the lessons of this pandemic before the next one hits."—Leigh Goodmark, author of Imperfect Victims: Criminalized Survivors and the Promise of Abolition Feminism
