Author: TheConversation

By J. Carlee Purdum, Research Assistant Professor, Texas A&M University Under pressure from the coronavirus pandemic, states are turning to prisoners for support. After New York Gov announced that the state prison system’s industrial arm, Corcraft, would help produce hand sanitizer, other states followed. Incarcerated populations were put to work washing potentially contaminated hospital laundry, manufacturing protective equipment, disinfecting cleaning supplies, and digging mass graves. To date, nearly every state in the U.S. has announced that its incarcerated populations are contributing labor to the pandemic response. I am a sociologist who studies how emergencies affect correctional institutions. Dependence on...

By Heidi A. Campbell, Professor, Texas A&M University Calls for social distancing due to the coronavirus pandemic have forced churches to cancel weekly gatherings, with many church leaders moving worship online. To help facilitate this, church consulting groups and religious leaders have posted a variety of guides to address concerns pastors have about technological issues and resources required to make this move. A survey of 1,500 church leaders in the U.S., released at the end of March, found 41% of pastors were struggling with the technological side of this move. The same study suggested that around half of church...

By Marc Ambinder, Executive Fellow in Digital Security, University of Southern California, Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism Many Americans have been under strict stay-at-home orders, or at least advisories, for more than a month. People are frustrated and depressed, but have complied with what they have been asked to endure because they trust that state and local public health officials are telling the truth about the coronavirus pandemic. There has been passionate – and honest – argument about how many people are likely to get sick and die under different circumstances and sets of official rules. It is...

By Kevin J. Bennett, Professor, University of South Carolina The burden of COVID-19 in rural areas has been under the radar, as the toll of the disease so far has been heaviest in dense urban areas. But up to 30% of the U.S. population lives in rural America, which already has experienced more than 128 hospital closures since 2010, including 19 last year. COVID-19 could lead to more closures and instability in rural America, even though the lower density of rural areas may help keep transmission rates of the disease down. With fewer people living across relatively large areas,...

By Steven Mulroy, Law Professor in Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, Election Law, University of Memphis When Wisconsin voters and officials sought to adapt the state’s spring elections to better observe social distancing guidelines, the U.S. Supreme Court refused. One of the changes state officials had asked for was extra time so voters could cast their ballots by mail. The coronavirus outbreak is set to last for months or even years. What will that mean for the elections – including the presidential one in November – that are on the way? Calls have come from many quarters, both Democratic and...

By Austin Sarat, Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science, Amherst College When Wisconsin voters had to brave the coronavirus pandemic to vote in their state’s April 7 election, it was the latest phase of a nearly 60-year legal and political fight over who can vote in the United States. Wearing masks and gloves, Wisconsin residents who voted in person were met by election officials in similar attire. That was new. But it wasn’t new that voters found hundreds of polling places closed and therefore had to wait in line for hours. A U.S. Supreme Court decision just the day...