When the Numbers Speak: Pain of Imprisonment, Coping, Recovery, And Social Responsibility

• In Event: PrisonPandemic: A Unique and Sizable Collection of Stories by Incarcerated People on Pandemic Conditions

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated and exposed conditions in our carceral facilities that create health hazards for those housed inside and the surrounding communities. Utilizing prison sociology scholarship on the deprivations of incarceration as the foundational framing, this article explores prisoner’s socially responsible response to the unintended impacts of pandemic protocols. Drawing from prisoners’ lived experience in California prisons from UC Irvine’s PrisonPandemic oral archive, this analysis reveals how the COVID-19 era of the pains of imprisonment caused prisoners to act in socially responsible ways as a method of coping while also recovering from trauma.

Author

• Gabe Rosales, University of California, Irvine