Covid Diagnosed the System: Lessons from the Pandemic in Massachusetts Prisons (Paperback or Softback)

Conley, Bridget

ISBN 10: 1978845146 / ISBN 13: 9781978845145

Published by Rutgers University Press 5/12/2026, 2026

Covid Diagnosed the System: Lessons from the Pandemic in Massachusetts Prisons. Seller Inventory # BBS-9781978845145

Synopsis:

The American criminal justice system was in flux in 2020, a clash of possibilities for reform, retrenchment, and radical change—nowhere more so than in Massachusetts, which had just passed major criminal justice reform. The COVID-19 pandemic interrupted the moment with life-threatening force, ravaging people held in prisons and jails across the country. However, it did not so much create new deprivations and suffering as it exposed prisons as sites of physical, institutional, and psychological violence that do not make communities safer. At the same time, advocates for people in prisons—including many incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people—seized on the pandemic's disruptions to demand change. Detailing the first year of the pandemic inside the Massachusetts state prison system, this book argues that the history of the pandemic inside prisons exposed both the cruelties of incarceration and the power of change when it is led by directly affected people.

About the Author:

Bridget Conley is the research director of the World Peace Foundation and an associate research professor at the Fletcher School at Tufts University. She is the coeditor of Accountability for Mass Starvation: Testing the Limits of the Law.

Bibliographic Details

Title: Covid Diagnosed the System: Lessons from the...
Publisher: Rutgers University Press 5/12/2026
Publication Date: 2026
Binding: Paperback or Softback
Condition: New
Book Type: Book